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This research project discusses how literature offers valuable

ways to become aware of how people experience, use, and


imagine places.It argues that Lefebvres concept of lived space,
experienced and lived through by characters, evoking memories
and imaginations, is the space that we encounter in the evocative
descriptions of places and spaces by literary writers. The
hypothesis of this work is that if existing literature can provide
such insights, a literary approach using instruments from
literature is also conceivable within the domain of architectural
research and even of architectural design.

Urban
To address the different perspectives that a literary approach
to architecture can provide, the work proposes a triad of
interrelated concepts: description, transcription and prescription.
Each of the three branches of this literary bridge connects to
a slightly different discourse and examples of architectural and

Literacy
literary practices. Together, the terms description, transcription
and prescription supply a framework to address lived experience
and develop tools for spatial research and design.

Klaske Havik is an architect and writer. She writes regularly for magazines
in the Netherlands and Nordic countries and is an editor of OASE, Journal
A Scriptive Approach to
for architecture. As assistant professor of architecture at Delft University
of Technology, she teaches the master diploma studio Public Realm
the Experience, Use, and
alongside courses in architecture theory and literature. She co-edited the
anthology Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Imagination of Place
Sphere (SUN, 2009). Poems of her hand have been published in a number
of Dutch poetry collections.
Klaske Havik
Urban Literacy
Urban Literacy
A Scriptive Approach to the Experience, Use, and Imagination of Place

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor


aan de Technische Universiteit Delft,
op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof.ir. K.C.A.M. Luyben,
voorzitter van het College voor Promoties,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 25 april 2012 om 12:30 uur
door Klaske Maria HAVIK
bouwkundig ingenieur
geboren te Haren
Dit proefschrift is goedgekeurd door de promotoren:

Prof.ir. S.U. Barbieri,


Prof. J.U. Pallasmaa,
Copromotor: Dr. T.L.P. Avermaete

Samenstelling promotiecommissie:

Rector Magnificus, voorzitter


Prof.ir. S.U. Barbieri, Technische Universiteit Delft, promotor
Prof J.U. Pallasmaa, Technische Universiteit Helsinki, promotor
Dr. T.L.P. Avermaete, Technische Universiteit Delft, copromotor
Prof. ir. ing. W.H.J. van den Bergh RWTH Aachen University, Duitsland
Prof.ir. M. Riedijk, Technische Universiteit Delft
Prof. dr. B. Keunen, Universiteit Gent
Prof. dr. K.Grillner, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Prof.ir. D.F. Sijmons, Technische Universiteit Delft, reservelid

ISBN: 978-94-6186-025-5
TU Delft Library
4
Copy editing: DLaine Camp
Graphic design: sannedijkstra.nl
Printing: Ando, Den Haag
Paper: Munken Lynx Rouph
Typeface: Filosofia en Cassia

Photography and illustrations:


The images of the bridge in Ljubljana and of the projects by Steven Holl architects, Bernard
Tschumi architects and Rem Koolhaas/OMA were used with permission of the offices, and
of the photographers:
D. Wedam (Ljubljana)
Paul Warchol (Steven Holl)
Hans Werlemann (OMA)
Philippe Ruault (OMA)

2012 K.M. Havik


All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used and/or reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author.
Acknowledgments
This work is the fruit of a joy in designing as much as in writing, and of a longtime Many people from around the world influenced this work, through lectures,
interest in the experience of architecture and city. It has been a tremendous pleas- conferences, discussions and shared projects. I wish to mention specifically my
ure to be able to combine these interests and modes of operating in the extensive friends and colleagues in Finland who always welcomed me in their offices, lecture
research project that this has become. I am grateful that I have been given the rooms and houses for exchanges of thoughts. I thank Panu Lehtovuori for a long-
chance to carry out this project, and I have to thank, first of all, professor Umberto time sharing of research interests and projects in architecture and writing.
Barbieri for giving me the opportunity to do so, and for giving me the freedom Juan-Luis Briceo has always offered me a home in many senses of the word. Jan
to work on my rather uncommon topic. Umberto has the ability to immediately Verwijnen encouraged me to start such a project at all even after he passed away
identify the essence of a sketch or a page of scribbled lines, and to formulate his in 2005, his original and critical voice remained a constant reference and moti-
precise critique without dictating any direction. His generous yet critical attitude vation. I thank Esa Laaksonen and the Alvar Aalto Foundation for making many
allowed me to work with great enthusiasm, while keeping me sharp when neces- exchanges possible.
sary. Without the erudition of my second supervisor, professor Juhani Pallasmaa, Of course, I owe a great debt of thanks to the students that have participated in
this work would have missed much of its theoretical foundation. Our conversa- the studios, workshops and seminars I have taught at the Faculty of Architecture
tions, usually held in the library of Juhanis office in Helsinki, have been meander- in Delft. In the Public Realm and Border Conditions studios, the transcription
ing streams of thought, crossed by countless references of architectural theory, from research findings to design projects has been most challenging, while the
phenomenology, literature and art alike. Juhanis capacity to connect theoretical City & Literature courses functioned as a laboratory to draw on literary themes and
insights to intuitive, personal observations has been highly inspirational. Tom techniques in architecture. I would like to mention especially a few (former) stu-
Avermaete played an important role as a co-supervisor of this work, critically com- dents for their particular enthusiasm and their inspiring continuations on the path
menting on numerous drafts of chapters, questioning the logic of the argument and of architecture and literary writing: Laura Theng, Mike Schfer, Pinar Balat and
suggesting relevant sources that I had overlooked. As a colleague, I have had the Alexia Symvoulidou. I am also grateful to the staff and students of the Faculty
pleasure of working with Tom on many other research and educational projects, of Architecture in Skopje, Macedonia, for inviting me twice to test my scriptive
such as the seminar series and publication Architectural Positions we carried out tools at their Summer School, and for their help in making the intensive work-
together with Hans Teerds. Through its in-depth explorations regarding architec- shops extremely rewarding.
ture, modernity and the public sphere, this project provided not only a firm theo- Of course this work would not have existed without my parents Wijbrand Havik and
retical background but also a great experience in realizing such an extensive work. Marieke Keuning. They laid the foundations of my broad interests and made me
I thank Hans Teerds for many fruitful exchanges in research and education, char- experience places from the very beginning. Finally, I thank my partner Sebas Veld-
acterized by a sincere interest in each others ideas. Of my colleagues in Delft, huisen for his capacity to create unexpected connections and original perspectives,
I also wish to thank Susanne Komossa, for her generosity in letting me test my and for accompanying me on many paths and journeys.
research ideas in education, Marc Schoonderbeek for cutting-edge projects and
insights, and Ana Mafalda Luz for sincere discussions and a shared belief in con-
necting disciplines. The editorial board of architecture journal OASE has func-
tioned as an active and inspiring platform for intellectual exchange, a place to
explore and discuss architectural themes with a group of academics and practicing
architects, who also became friends. My contribution for the issue on Architec-
ture and Literature, edited with Christoph Grafe and Madeleine Maaskant, can
be seen retrospectively as a first conceptual sketch for this dissertation. DLaine
Camp, managing editor of OASE, played a very important role in the last phase of
this work, copy-editing the final text. With great effort and enthusiasm, graphic
designer Sanne Dijkstra contributed to its physical realization, making this book a
place in itself.
Table of Contents Prologue 13
The story of the bridge part 1

1 Departure 14

1.1 Destination
1.1.1 Ambiguity of architecture 15
1.1.2 The bridge of urban literacy 17
1.1.3 Description-transcription-prescription 22

1.2 Trajectory
1.2.1 Bridging 24
1.2.2 A threefold composition 27
1.2.3 Parallel paths 29

1.3 Departure
1.3.1 Precedents and predecessors 32
1.3.2 Coming to terms 36
1.3.3 Projects on the way 39

2 DESCRIPTION 42

2.1 description
2.1.1 Writing as: evocative description 43
2.1.2 Writing from: architecture in literary descriptions 46
2.1.3 Close reading: observation and perception 51

2.2 reading places


2.2.1 Phenomenology of architecture 55
2.2.2 Lived experience of place 60
2.2.3 Poetic receptivity 65

2.3 architectural description


2.3.1 Architectural descriptions: Steven Holl 70
2.3.2 Anchoring and intertwining: Kiasma museum, Helsinki 76
2.3.3 Description in architectural education 84

Table of Contents ~ Urban Literacy


3 TRANSCRIPTION 94 5 Arrival 204

3.1 transcription 5.1 The triple bridge in use


3.1.1 Writing across: social activity in literary spaces 95 5.1.1 Explorations: three fields, three paths 205
3.1.2 Writing through: transcription as experimental practice 99 5.1.2 Connections: intertextuality 208
3.1.3 Writing another version: the role of the reader 102 5.1.3 Distinctions: reading, telling, writing places 211
5.2 The river: reflections
3.2 telling places 5.2.1 Opening perspectives: discourse 213
3.2.1 Social spatial practices 105 5.2.2 Offering directions: education 215
3.2.2 Narrative: activity in space and time 110 5.2.3 Positioning fields: architectural and urban practice 216
3.2.3 Narrative space: architectural perspective 113

3.3 architectural transcription 5.3 The banks: grounding in context


3.3.1 Architectural transcriptions: Bernard Tschumi 122 5.3.1 The field: the public realm 218
3.3.2 Architecture and event: The Manhattan Transcript 127 5.3.2 The city: urban regeneration 220
3.3.3. Transcription in architectural education 136 5.3.3 The view: urban literacy 222

4 PRESCRIPTION 150 Epilogue 11


The story of the bridge part 2: Pleniks story 226
4.1 prescription
4.1.1 Writing before: speculation and critique 151 References 230
4.1.2 Writing beyond: imagining situations 154
4.1.3 Writing between: reality and imagination 157 Summary in Dutch 240

4.2 writing places Curriculum Vitae 243


4.2.1 Architectural imaginations and critiques 160
4.2.2 Real and imagined: urban scenarios 166
4.2.3 Temporal and spatial world-views: chronotope 171
4.3 architectural prescription
4.3.1 Architectural prescriptions: Rem Koolhaas 177
4.3.2 Critique and imagination: projects by Koolhaas/OMA 185
4.3.3 Prescription in architectural education 193

Table of Contents ~ Urban Literacy


Prologue
ljubljana, 2006.
Leaving the apartment in the morning, I inhaled the clear cold of autumn air, smelled the
chestnuts baking on the corner of the small square next to the three bridges. The castle on
the other side still partly hidden in fog, weak sunlight starting to cast its spell on the trees
lining up the river bank as I walked by, and I continued my way to the university library,
designed by Joe Plenik. My fingers softly scraped the plinth of its faade: rough stone,
simultaneously hard and soft. It has a life of its own, I thought, and imagined where it
came from, a mountain, how it had been carved out, how the architect had drawn its size
and position in the wall, how a craftsmans hand must have placed it in the plasticity of
this faade, how it had passed the years of students passing, of sun and rain and frost.
I turned the corner and shook the cold handle, the shape of a horse head, of the heavy
main entrance door to this library. Inside, its monumental staircase reminded me of the
impressive staircase in Rossis Bonnefanten museum in Maastricht, while realizing that
the influence must be understood the other way around - they were some fifty years apart.
In one of the streets leading from the library back to the river, I entered an antiquarian
bookstore and found Jungs Synchronicity on its shelves.1 The temperature had risen
and I treated myself to a coffee at a terrace on the riverside, near the triple bridge. Like
the library, this bridge, consisting of three bridges (Tro-mostovje) was designed by Joe
12 Plenik, as a part of a larger reconstruction of the quays along the river Ljubljanica. Sur- 13
prisingly, the three directions of the bridge do not correspond to monumental axes, as one
would expect, and Plenik might very well have managed to span the short distance with
one single bridge. The triple bridges, however, offer three slightly different perspectives of
the central square. While I was reading Jungs theory about the coincidental connection
between events, things started falling into place. I watched the three bridges, realizing
how they connected this city to itself, its natural curve following the river, its hill with the
Castle, I watched the railings, the stairs leading to the lower embankment, I watched the
people, pedestrians making their way along the river, visiting the market place, crossing
the bridge by one of the three branches, to the other side, to other urban places, to other
activities. I imagined their trajectories and imagined how the triple bridge influenced
their perspectives. It was here that all trajectories of the city intersected. And it was here
that all themes and ambiguities of architecture became visible: the objects and subjects of
the city, the individual and the collective, the designer and the users, the reality and the
imagination, the detail and the larger, urban whole. This was my bridge, my metaphori-
cal model, the key to the apparatus of my work. Here, I could explore different directions,
while holding them together as a unity. I began to explore the bridge, as a place to read, to
talk, and to write.

1 First note: Carl Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Princeton University
Panoramic view of the triple bridge Tromostovje in Ljubljana. Press, New York 1973 [1952]

~ Urban Literacy
1 Departure 1.1 Destination
1.1.1 ambiguity of architecture

This work proposes a literary view on the experience, use and imagination of place.
My quest for the formulation of another approach to architecture and the city
derived from a critique on the relative absence of these themes in architectural
discourse, education and practice, which tend to foreground formalistic and visual
aspects of architecture. Looking for a way to find a richer perspective from which
to address the complexity of lived experience, I arrived at literature. Through lit-
erature, this work proposes another way of thinking about architecture and the city,
and it offers tools to practice and educate their analysis and design.

Let me clarify why I have started this literary journey, by quoting two architectural
voices that have brought to the fore the ambiguity of the architectural profession
as its fundamental challenge since precisely this challenge has been my place
of departure. Architect Bernard Tschumi spoke of the paradox of architecture
when addressing the difference between the conceptual thought of architects and
14 the physical, social and experiential aspects of its built reality. Tschumi describes 15
this ambiguous field of tension as the paradoxical relationship between archi-
tecture as a product of the mind, as a conceptual and dematerialized discipline,
and architecture as the sensual experience of space and as a spatial practice . . . the
impossibility of simultaneously questioning the nature of space, and, at the same
time, making or experiencing a real space.2 Indeed, while architects are educated
to think rationally about their object of design and discourse, in reality the way
architecture is perceived and lived in takes on other dimensions than the purely
theoretical, technical and the measurable. Precisely this paradox makes the archi-
tectural profession both complex and challenging. Spatial design, indeed an action
of the mind, is concerned with the making of a physical space that is used, lived and
experienced by people. If this is the case, an important question for architects and
other spatial designers is how people relate to places. How, for instance, is it pos-
sible that some places become anchored in the memories of people, while others
remain largely overseen? What is the influence of architecture on the perception of
our living environment, on the activities that take place, on our social encounters,
on our thoughts, stories and dreams regarding places?

The ambiguity of architecture is at stake on numerous levels. The architect and

2 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Transgression, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and
Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass / London 1996, pp. 66-67

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


theorist Juhani Pallasmaa has described architecture as an impure discipline, with a certain ambivalence concerning subjectivity and objectivity, individuality
not only in that it is in many ways related to other fields and disciplines, but also and collectivity, and fiction and reality. I propose that this ambiguity of literature,
because numerous seemingly opposite notions are at stake within architecture which might at first sight complicate a productive relationship between literature
itself: Architecture is simultaneously a practical and a metaphysical act: a utilitar- and architecture, is precisely its strength. The gaze of the literary writer enables us
ian and poetic, technological and artistic, economic and existential, collective and to momentarily resolve these seemingly binary oppositions, and to illustrate that
individual, manifestation of our being.3 This impurity, as Pallasmaa calls it, in fact, the lived experience of architecture is a matter of both. If existing literature
is by no means to be understood as a weakness of architecture. On the contrary, I can provide such insights, a literary approach using instruments from literature
would argue that precisely the nature of architecture to always address two sides of is conceivable within the domain of architectural research and even of architec-
the matter should be considered its richness. However, the question remains how tural design.
architects can be educated to use this ambiguity in a productive way. How can they
find a balance between seemingly contradictory notions? How can architecture
serve functional needs and simultaneously stir the senses and emotions? How can
a building be both stable, durable, functional, affordable and artistically expressive 1.1.2 the bridge of urban literacy
and meaningful? How can a place have a different meaning for each individual,
and at the same time provide a public realm and be part of a collective identity?
These fundamental ambiguities of architecture have formed the place of depar- The destination of this academic journey is thus to build a bridge that can help to
ture of this project. While acknowledging that the paradox between architecture as creatively address the ambiguities of architecture, and to connect architectural
both a product of the mind and a bodily perceived, experiential reality will never research and practice to the lived experience of places. Taking into account the
be solved, this project intends to draw threads between both of its sides, and show perspectives that literature has to offer, the hypothesis of this work is that this
how the above described ambiguity can prove inspiring, enriching and productive bridge can be a literary one. The choice for a literary approach to discuss spatial
for architects. While acknowledging that the paradox will remain the very field of matters might at first seem a detour, but I hope to show in this work that this detour
tension upon which architecture operates, I argue that it is through architecture can be a way around the way architecture is commonly thought about and prac-
16 (in the moment of the design decision as well as in the moment of the actual spatial ticed. I would like to highlight three important perspectives. First, evocative liter- 17
experience) that the paradox can momentarily dissolve, and that such seemingly ary descriptions of spaces, whether in novels or poetry, often reveal an inclusive
opposite notions can coincide. Indeed, rather than seeing architectures ambiguity understanding of architectural experience. While in architecture the visual and the
as a problem, I have regarded it as a fertile field of tension upon which I could trace formal tend to be dominant, literature allows us to describe other sensory percep-
out my paths. Paths, indeed, that could creatively address the paradox of archi- tions of spaces with great detail and intensity. Also other aspects of lived experi-
tecture, that could deal with such seemingly opposite notions as subject-object, ence, such as atmosphere, mood or memory, which remain largely untouched in
author-reader and reality-imagination, and that could connect architectural architectural discourse, come to the fore in literary descriptions. Literature thus
research and practice to the lived experience of places. As will become clear in this allows us to address the experience of places in richer ways than architects usually
work, these paths have emerged from literature. tend to do. Second, literature allows us to address the use of architecture. Especially
when describing urban places, literary narratives often reveals the social aspects
As a writer and reader of both architectural and literary texts, I have come to realize of architecture it is through the literary accounts of such places that we can learn
that in literature, the experiences of space and spatial practice are often much about the socius of architecture.4 In literature, the user appears twice, not only
more accurately described than in professional writings on architecture and cities, as a character whose activities unfold in time and space, but also as the reader who,
whether in the form of architectural history, criticism or design theory. Literary in a sense, co-produces the story by his or her own imagination. The active rela-
writers instead prove to be able to read places and spaces, cities and landscapes at tionship between writer and reader, as well as between the activities of characters
different levels. Indeed, the relationship between humans and their environment and the spatial setting of the novel, deserves closer study by architects, as all too
is often described with great accuracy and detail in novels and stories. Space in lit- often the attention paid to the user is limited to fulfilling programmatic require-
erature, as seen from the point of view of literary characters with their own memo- ments, without taking into account the life of a building after its inauguration:
ries and emotions, is almost by definition lived space. Literary writing confronts us a life marked by changing uses and users. Third, novels can be seen as sketches
3 Juhani Pallasmaa, Landscapes of Architecture- Architecture and the Influence of Other 4 Dutch professor Arie Graafland uses this term in his discussion of the relationship between
Fields of Inquiry, 2003, published in: Peter Mackeith (editor), Encounters. Architectural essays architecture and society. Arie Graafland, The Socius of Architecture. Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York,
by Juhani Pallasmaa, Rakennustieto Oy, Helsinki 2005, pp. 335-336 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2000.

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


of another world, balancing between reality and imagination. Sometimes, these idea of such a literacy, focused on urban place, providing a set of tools to describe,
worlds can be read as critiques on the existing, while some literary writers, such as read and write the city, seemed appropriate for my quest, as it touches upon pre-
the surrealists, have gone far to explore the potential of the imagination. If novels cisely the connection between spatial disciplines and literature. The strength of
present constructions of another world, architectural designs are much alike: urban literacy, as I provisionally label it after Landry, lies in the idea that multi-
they prescribe, as it were, a not yet existing situation. By studying the tools that ple disciplines and therefore perspectives are used simultaneously, and multi-
writers employ in constructing their spatial imaginations, we can learn new ways to ple time periods are viewed side by side. The approach can be called literary insofar
imagine architecture. as it adopts the gaze of literary characters in order to reveal, highlight and question
the lived experience of urban space. In Landrys book, urban literacy is presented
The literary bridge that this work intends to construct might shed a new light on as a broad notion encompassing many different terms:
the unitary code by which the French theorist Henri Lefebvre hoped to connect Urban literacy is concerned with interpreting and decoding all our experiences
the conceived nature of theoretical discourse about space and the lived space of and senses . . . It seeks to understand the shapes of urban landscapes and why they
inhabitants and users. Lefebvre sought a language common to practice and came about. It tries to sense history. It attempts to feel the citys economy . . . it
theory, as also to inhabitants, architects and scientists, that would bring together helps identify social consequences of urban economies in transition . . . it helps
levels and terms which are isolated by existing spatial practice and by ideologies appreciate aesthetic codes . . . it intuits and interprets the manifold urban distinc-
underpinning it: the (micro)architectural level and the (macro)level [of] urban- tions and identifiers . . . .8
ists, politicians and planners; the everyday realm and the urban realm.5 Indeed,
an approach to bridge the different ways that space is thought about, experienced, Landrys description, while thought provoking, still remains unclear as to how the
used and imagined. Lefebvre also hints at different scales at stake: he suggests that various disciplines can work together and how urban planners and architects can
urbanists, politicians and planners tend to think and operate on a larger, urban, employ this new urban language. Seeking ways to read the city, Landry discusses
scale than the architectural scale of everyday life. If such a code can be compared to reframing devices such as seeing through the eyes of . . . and survey of the
a language, Lefebvre suggests that it should bring . . . an alphabet, a lexicon and a senses9. The first device encourages the designer to conduct a site analysis from
grammar together in within an overall framework.6 Some 25 years after Lefebvres the perspective of a different (fictional) character, whereas the second focuses on
18 quest, Charles Landry, one of the key theorists in urban innovation, suggested that looking with different senses than only the visual which is obviously the domi- 19
there might be such a language, or rather, literacy, to bring different disciplines nant sense in architecture and urban planning. Both techniques are essentially
together, indeed by using a writers gaze to look at urban and spatial questions. In literary; the use of a characters perspective and details of sensory perception to
The Creative City, Landry defines urbanism as the discipline constituting a dialectics describe a specific setting are commonly used by literary writers. By introduc-
with other related disciplines, and introduces the concept urban literacy within ing such devices, Landry gives some hints as to how urban literacy could work.
a series of seven concepts that can be seen as possible tools for urban innovation: However, he has not made urban literacy instrumental for the design disciplines.
Urban literacy is the ability and skill to read the city and understand how cities While Landry introduces the concept as a key issue, which can lead to a new lan-
work, and is developed by learning about urbanism . . . Urbanism can become the guage in urban planning,10 it offers only a challenging starting point. A more
meta urban discipline and urban literacy a linked generic and overarching skill. precise articulation of the concept should reveal how social and spatial disciplines
A full understanding of urbanism only occurs by looking at the city from different can be brought together. Further, the instruments of urban literacy should be
perspectives.7 more clearly defined. The use of literary instruments to understand and engage
spatial qualities in architecture and urban design provides a means for various
I came across Landrys notion of urban literacy early in this work, and immediately disciplines to work together. In order to make this literary approach applicable to
realized that it offers an interesting and potentially productive view on contempo- architectural research and design, it is necessary to make urban literacy more spe-
rary urban innovation. The word literacy suggests the functionality of the approach: cific, and explore its possibilities more thoroughly.
if literacy is a complex set of abilities needed to read, write and understand a lan-
guage, then urban literacy is the ability to read, write and understand the city. The The theoretical construction that I propose to connect the idea of urban literacy to
architectural research and practice can be visualized as a threefold literary bridge
5 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production
despace, Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974], pp 64-65 8 Charles Landry, The Creative City- a toolkit for urban innovators, Comedia / Earthscan, London
6 Ibidem 2000, p 249
7 Charles Landry, The Creative City- a toolkit for urban innovators, Comedia / Earthscan, London 9 Ibidem, p. 180
2000, pp. 246-247 10 Ibidem, p 250

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addressing important aspects of urban literacy by means of three interrelated
scriptive concepts: description, transcription and prescription three differ- description transcription prescription
ent concepts that offer the possibility to introduce the gaze of the literary writer
in the domain of architecture and urbanism. I call them scriptive, since writing,
scribere is the most essential activity of the writer. While the three concepts are also field lived experience use, activity time, indeterminacy
literary, I chose the term scriptive since this addresses the active use of a literary
gaze. The term scriptive can also be related to architecture: architecture scripts
spaces and spatial sequences, as it were. Each of the three branches of this bridge intersecting subject-object author-reader reality-imagination
provides a different perspective, by connecting to different theoretical discourses concepts
and examples of architectural and literary practices. The terms description, tran-
scription and prescription supply a framework to structure knowledge and develop
literary tools for research, education and design concerning architecture and the spatial theory phenomenology, social space theory, real-and-imagined space,
city. In the chapter Description, I propose that the descriptive capacity of the liter- place attachment spatial practices chance, scenario planning
ary writer is a skill that can help architects to develop a sensitivity to perceptual
and poetic aspects of places. Here, the ambiguous relation between subject and
object is at stake. The chapter Transcription focuses on the crossing of disciplinary literary evocative description, narrative, scenario,
borders, and on the investigation of the interactive relationship between author instruments observation, character, montage /assemblage,
and reader, and consequently, between architect and user. Then, the chapter Pre- poetic receptivity experiment chronotope
scription deals with the field of tension between reality and imagination, as indeed
architects and planners are involved with the making of a not yet existing situation.
Literary approaches that deal with indeterminacy and creatively use the relation- theoretical Merleau-Ponty, Lefebvre, de Certeau, Soja, Bakthin,
ship between reality and imagination offer tools to deal with this relation in design. references Tuan, Casey Ricoeur Keunen
20 Within each of the branches, the same path of research has been followed in order 21
to construct the spatiality of the bridge of urban literacy. In the main branches,
each concept is first defined in terms of etymology and connotation. Fragments literary Proust, Calvino, Mulisch, Benjamin, Couperus, Orwell, Houellebeqc,
from novels and poems serve as illustrations of these definitions. Second, a critical references Heg, Haasse, Pessoa, Oulipo, Danielewski, Kafka, Aragon, Breton,
reading of relevant theoretical sources provides a basis on which to connect each Kopland James Joyce Garcia-Marquez
concept to a specific architectural discourse. Third, an analytical model is present-
ed in the form of an analysis of the work of an architect, which is argued
to be exemplary for the approach. A number of exercises in architectural educa- Steven Holl, Bernard Tschumi Rem Koolhaas,
tions show at the end of each chapter how the approach can be taught and further architectural Peter Zumthor, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Situationists International,
developed. references Juhani Pallasmaa Libeskind, Wim Cuyvers, Archigram,
Raoul Bunschoten John Hejduk, Aldo Rossi

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


1.1.3 architectural space. By transcribing such literary concepts to architectural tools, I
description - transcription - prescription argue in this chapter, an opening can be given to including users perspectives as
well as aspects of activity and directionality in architectural research and design.
First, the notion of transcription will be introduced by shining a light on its etymo-
Description, offering ways to evocatively describe the city and architecture on logical background, which hints at a directional dimension, while the common use
different levels, can be regarded as an overarching theme in the bridge of urban of the term transcription, as the step to move from one discipline or instrument
literacy. This chapter addresses the relationship between literary description and to the other, will point the way to a multidisciplinary approach to the theme of the
the lived experience of space. Through carefully describing, it is possible to grasp experience of places. Questioning the seemingly stable character of architecture,
the relationship between the observing subjects and the architectural objects in the the notion transcription relates to the activities taking place within architecture. A
city, as well as the interactive relation between subject and object. Rather than on number of literary examples will highlight this connection between architectural
maps, surveys, theoretical investigations and planning documents, lived experi- spaces and the spatial practices of their use. In the second part of the chapter,
ence exists in peoples thoughts and memories, and it is predominantly this space a theoretical framework will be established in which social spatial practices are
that we encounter in the evocative descriptions of places and spaces by literary addressed with reference to a number of theoretical positions. Among others, the
writers. The skill of evocative description, I argue in this chapter, can be seen as a viewpoints of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Richard Sennett, considering
key notion in developing an urban literacy. First, I will introduce the notion of the social aspects of spatial practices, will be discussed. The potential of scriptive
description by formulating its definition and illustrating its relationship to liter- techniques in revealing social aspects of places will be highlighted in the third part
ary writing. Second, the connection between the notion of description and lived of this chapter, which shows how transcription can become an operational concept
experience will be anchored in a theoretical framework. This theoretical investi- in architecture, in its capacity to narrate social-spatial practices. The written and
gation leads particularly to the fields of the phenomenology of architecture11 and architectural work of Bernard Tschumi serves as an analytical model in this part of
the poetics of space.12 The chapter highlights how description allows us to under- the chapter. I argue that Tschumis work offers a dynamic definition of architec-
stand the lived experience of urban places by describing them as they appear to us, ture as a social discourse. The last paragraphs extends these views to contemporary
through sensory experience. Also, a number of contemporary positions regarding architectural education.
22 the use of evocative description will be presented. In the third part of this chapter, 23
the potential of description for the practice of architecture will be illustrated by The prescriptive branch of the triple bridge of this work takes into account the
a close reading of the work of the American architect Steven Holl. Drawing on balance between reality and imagination. Prescription is the act of prospecting,
phenomenological themes such as intertwining and anchoring in both his predicting or constructing new situations. In literature, the construction of new
written and architectural work, a close reading of his Kiasma museum in Helsinki worlds is not uncommon. Often, such literary world-views offer a critical account
will reveal the potential for evocative description as an operational concept for of society. Indeed, when applying the concept of prescription to architecture, the
architectural design. As a closing of this chapter and opening towards new uses of position of the architect designing for an unknown future is at stake. By definition,
description, I aim to make explicit how this could work in architectural education. architects construct their imaginary account of the future world of which their built
projects will take part, and they have to deal creatively with chance and indetermi-
The chapter Transcription approaches the question of architecture and lived expe- nacy. First, the notion of prescription will be defined in relation to reality, imagi-
rience from the vantage point of social practices. It focuses on the social dimension nation and temporality in literary writing. A number of literary examples will show
of architecture and connects the role of activities, movements and events in the how writers have dealt with these aspects to express their accounts of time, place
experience of architecture to the field of tension between individual and collec- and urban experience. Literary writers can offer speculative accounts of future
tive and between author and reader in literature. In this chapter, literary concepts situations, or critical interpretations of existing realities. Especially surrealist and
such as perspective, character, temporality and narrative are brought into play. magic realistic literary practices will come to the fore as approaches merging reality
Especially the notion of narrative comes to the fore as an instrument linking space and imagination. In all of these cases, writers construct a framework with spatial
to the lived experience of its users. Narrative relates to activities unfolding in the and temporal dimensions, which functions as a filter for selecting events and
course of the story; likewise activities unfold against the background of urban and descriptions. The second part of this chapter will address this selective mechanism
that writers employ in the presentation of their literary worlds, by discussing the
11 Most authors in this field refer to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception.
Routledge, New York 2005; original edition: Phnomnologie de la perception. Paris (Gallimard) literary concept of the chronotope, as introduced by the Russian philosopher and
1945. See for further discussion chapter 2.2 of this work. literary theorist Bakhtin. The chronotope offers a starting point for a theoretical
12 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [1964] exploration of the time-places that architects construct through imagination. In
Departure ~ Urban Literacy
the balance between reality and imagination, uncertainty is seen as a potentially body for practical reality.14 Indeed, a bridge itself is both a mental and a physi-
productive factor for the design of urban futures. As examples of architectural cal construction, it renders meaning to both sides while it is experienced by the
prescription, the critical and imaginative practices of avant-garde groups such as body that uses it to cross a river or an abyss. This work can be seen as a bridge, a
Situationists International, Archigram and Superstudio will be discussed, as well conceptual bridge, that is, but one that in its very essence concerns architectural
as the strong relation that exists between architecture and fiction in the work of experience in all its aspects. This bridge of urban literacy does not only connect
John Hejduk. The third part of the chapter opens a perspective on the operational two banks or bridge one gap; rather, it opens up a field for architecture to explore,
potential of prescription for architectural writing, research and practice. A more beyond the banks, but also the space of the bridge itself.
extensive exploration of the prescriptive writings and architectural projects of
Rem Koolhaas focuses on the critical aspect in prescriptive practice. His position A crucial skill for practicing architects is the capacity to mediate: between dif-
as a critical writer as well as his design methods are clearly rooted in literary prec- ferent actors, between reality and the imagination of a future situation, between
edents. As a closure of the chapter, the potential of prescription in architectural different scales and between different fields of knowledge. In the complexity of a
education will be highlighted. building process, architects have to mediate between different actors: they have to
be capable to switch between different languages, as it were, to communicate with
clients, technicians of various fields, and users. By definition, architects operate

1.2 Trajectory between times, between the present and the imagination of future spatial situation
while aspects of historicity may also play a part in a design process. Within each
project, a balance is also sought between various scales: the detail and the urban
setting, the parts and the whole. Architects continuously mediate between mate-
1.2.1 bridging rial, technical, structural, cultural, social and economic fields of knowledge. We
might argue that architects operate as generalists, rather than as specialists. Their
specialism is precisely the capacity to make connections between the different
I have explicitly chosen bridging as a method for this work: the bridging between fields, scales, actors and time frames, and to productively address the ambiguities
24 literary and architectural insights, between different fields and approaches. A that are at stake in each and every architectural project. Indeed, as architects are 25
bridge is more than a mere connector of two sides, it also defines the banks and compelled to find a balance between various fields and approaches, a researcher in
their hinterland more clearly, and the bridge is a place, a unity in itself. In Build- the field of architecture is confronted with the task to balance between the concep-
ing, Dwelling, Thinking, Martin Heidegger made use of the bridge to explain how a tuality of academic discourse and the experience of architectures physical reality;
building gathers the seemingly contrasting notions earth and sky, the mortals especially when addressing themes such as poetic experience, the users perspec-
and the divine: tive, and indeterminacy, which are difficult to express in scientific terms. The very
The banks emerge only as the bridge crosses the stream . . . With the banks, the themes of this research work thus ask for an in-between positioning: in between
bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying the scientific and the artistic, between the author and the reader, the individual
behind them. It brings stream and bank and land into each others neighbourhood. and the collective, between literature and architecture. Indeed, in this work, I
The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and move between fields, and I hope my writing to be both analytical and poetic. My
attends the stream . . .13 approach is explicitly interdisciplinary and it is my conviction that using such an
interdisciplinary approach is important in academic thinking, and specifically in
According to Heidegger, the bridge, even if it is an object, a thing in itself, allows thinking about architecture. My doctoral research thus addresses ways of mediat-
a location to come into existence. A bridge is practical, in that it allows us to cross ing, and uses a mediating approach to do so: it offers a reading, interpretation and
from one side to the other, but it is also an intellectual construct: it is through the new organization of various architectural perspectives.
bridge that the ambiguity of connectedness and separation becomes visible. As
Georges Simmel has put it already before Heidegger in his seminal essay Bridge The ambition to bridge the gap between theory and practice, between architec-
and Door, this renders the bridge also an aesthetic value in itself: The bridge gives ture as a product of the mind and as an experienced and lived reality, implies
the eye the same support for connecting the sides of the landscape as it does to the that yet another gap has to be bridged: the one between scientific research and
13 Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking,originally published as Bauen, Wohnen,
14 Georg Simmel, Bridge and Door, originally published in 1909, Quote from: Neil Leach
Denken in 1951, Quote from: Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture. A reader in cultural theory.
(ed.), Rethinking Architecture. A reader in cultural theory. Routledge, London/New York, 2003
Routledge, London/New York, 2003 [1997], p. 104
[1997], pp. 66-67
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the more artistic approach of literary writing and architectural design. If in this knowledge from various disciplines, ultimately bridging all the different aspects
work I indeed choose to present literary references and literary techniques, I shall at stake in a mediating composition. The work may best be characterized as critical
acknowledge their explicitly subjective nature and recognize the value of this sub- theory, in the words of Jane Rendell:
jectivity. Subjectivity, in my view, is not the opposite of objectivity: while a claim . . . critical theories are forms of knowledge [that] differ from theories in the
for objectivity can be made in the natural sciences, , in architecture, as well as in natural sciences because they are reflective rather than objectifying they take
literature, both notions are at stake simultaneously, and it is in fact the very revers- into account their own procedures and methods. . . . Critical theories aim neither
ibility of subject and object that makes for a lived experience of architecture, as I to provide a hypothesis nor to prescribe a particular methodology . . . Critical
will further discuss in the chapter Description. This is not to say, however, that my theory is instructive in offering many different ways of operating between two.19
methodology as such totally breaks with scientific research, as the French philoso-
pher and scientist Gaston Bachelard suggested in the introduction to his seminal As will become clear in the next paragraphs, the way of operating between two has
book The Poetics of Space. Here, he describes a need to let go of rational, intellectual in this case become a triad: a continuous shifting between three similar, but simul-
reflection in his search for a theory of the poetic imagination: Little by little, this taneously very different paths.
method, which has in favour its scientific prudence, seemed to me an insufficient
basis on which to found a metaphysics of imagination.15 He argues even that the
philosopher must forget his learning and break with all his habits of philosophi-
cal research, if he wants to study the problems posed by the poetic imagination.16 1.2.2 a threefold composition
Also Henri Lefebvre, whose notion of lived space17 is one of the foundational con-
cepts of this work, warns against all too narrow scientific thinking. It seems that
Lefebvre himself, as an author and thinker, in some ways applied a rather liter- In my quest for tools and insights from literature, composition has never been
ary viewpoint, in the sense that he tells different story lines, looks from multiple a theme as such in fact, composition might be regarded as a skill that literary
perspectives, and explores his field of study by traveling through it rather than writers borrow from architects, rather than vice versa. However, I have found that
pretending to be scientific. 18 While indebted to the positions of Bachelard and in terms of research methodology, the crucial moment of design in this process has
26 Lefebvre, my work is by no means an attempt to escape the methods of scientific indeed been the very composition of this work as a threefold structure, discuss- 27
research. As any work of scientific research, this project intends to reveal con- ing three diverging perspectives, together forming a bridge between both sides of
nections between matters or ideas that are not usually connected. It is based on a the paradox that I want to address. If in an architectural design process, composi-
rigorous reading of relevant sources in the different fields that I intend to connect, tion can be seen as a moment of autonomy of the architect within the heterogeneous
and it investigates how the concepts I have attempted to formulate manifest them- setting that each project entails, one might argue that the composition of a work of
selves in architectural precedents, while presenting a set of tools that I have then architectural research is an act of design as well. The underlying threefold struc-
tested in education and design. However, I do this to address topics (use, experi- ture of this dissertation may not be brought to the fore as content, but it is the very
ence and imagination of places) that are indeed difficult to measure or verify. The composition that allows all the different components to be read and interpreted.
looking glass of literature, the art of observing and imagining, of setting scenes
and making narratives, offers a means to address these topics in another way. It is The threefold bridge that I have constructed in this work refers to a physical urban
therefore that I have searched for the formulation of such an in-between approach place: the Tromostovje (three bridges) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, designed in the
by means of literature. The work itself, however, is not literary, nor should it be 1930s by Joe Plenik. This bridge, consisting of three branches with slightly dif-
entirely defined as a study in architectural or spatial theory. In this project, archi- ferent characters and directions, has been a highly inspirational reference for my
tectural research can be understood as the reinterpreting and re-ordering of project. While offering a model for my project, discussing three different perspec-
tives of a literary approach to architecture, it also accommodates precisely Lefe-
15 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston Mass., 1994, [La potique despace, bvres triad of social space: the conceived, the perceived and the lived. The image
Paris 1958] p. xviii of this bridge can be seen as an intellectually conceived composition, looked at in
16 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston Mass 1994 p. xv birds-eye view from the castle in Ljubljana; meanwhile it is a built reality in stone
17 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production
despace, Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974]
18 For an account of Lefebvres literary approach, see also: Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to 19 With these lines, Rendell refers to Raymond Geuss definition of critical theory (Raymond Geuss,
Los-Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Malden, Massachusetts 1996, pp. 54-55. See also the The Idea of Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School 1981), Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture. A
chapter prescription of this work. Place Between, I.B. Tauris, London/ New York 2006, pp. 8-9

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


and concrete upon which the inhabitants and visitors of Ljubljana have traced out as active relationships. Especially when such two seemingly opposite notions start
their paths and constructed their memories and stories. In the final composition to work together, a third condition arises, and as I will argue further in this work,
of my dissertation, I have devoted special attention to this bridge: it is the bridge precisely this moment, this productive exchange, this bridging moment is the very
itself that, in the form of the prologue and epilogue, forms the opening and closure moment of architecture or of literature. The third condition is not just another,
of the work. The triple bridge has been simultaneously structure, method and met- next to the previous two, it is a bridge that connects them. In regard to the relation-
aphor of this work, and as such, the composition has been a leading principle to ship between architecture and literature, a third condition may be at stake as well,
guide the intellectual decisions made throughout the process. The composition in as Angelika Corbineau-Hoffmann states: similar to how the writer brings truth
three parts reappears throughout the work: not only in the description-transcrip- and untruth together in a third, architecture as well builds, when entering litera-
tion-prescription triad, but as well in the tripartite division of each chapter and ture, a third . . .22 Architectural motives in literature, she claims, can in their rich-
subchapter, and ultimately in the composition of the whole work. Here, another ness address many different aspects at once, thereby indeed constructing a third,
threefold structure appears: the core of the three main chapters has a double skin. an alternative not by denying such categories, but rather by explicitly confronting
First, it has been covered by the introductory and concluding chapter- the Depar- them.23 The precise nature of such a third condition remains vague on purpose,
ture and Arrival of the journey. Then, an outer skin has been placed around the she explains, because its function is to trigger the curiosity of the reader, who is
work like a translucent membrane, containing the Prologue on the front, and the challenged to rethink his habit of thinking in binary oppositions. Indeed, when
Epilogue on the back. The outer skin is different in its appearance, as its style is thinking of the connections between architecture and literature, and when trying,
literary rather than academic. However, it does cover (in the double meaning of the in this work, to make such connections operational, it is not the two disciplines
word) the very content of the work. themselves that are the key topic, but precisely the unnamable that lies in between,
a third condition, which offers alternative possibilities to describe, understand and
The threefold structure of this work is exemplary for the methodology by means of practice architecture.
which it came about. Knowing that my quest for a literary approach to the experi-
ence, use and imagination of place would bring me to a wide variety of literary and
spatial notions, I chose not to focus on one specific notion, but rather to explore a
28 larger field to test my initial hypothesis. Not only did I introduce three notions, I 1.2.2 parallel paths 29
also travelled parallel paths in order to explore my field, deepen my thoughts and
elaborate my concepts. The use of three interconnected notions is a methodologi-
cal choice for a dialectic approach. In Thirdspace, the book in which Edward Soja While the threefold composition forms an important support for the reader of this
offers a contemporary reading of Lefebvres work, the term thirding is introduced, work, I have used triads as well during the whole research process. They functioned
or more precisely Thirding-as-Othering. Soja states that, rather than thinking in as a sort of methodological puzzles, and helped me to obtain an open gaze within in
binary opposites, it is intellectually productive to add a third term, which provides my project. In the first phase of this project, I ordered my work in three intercon-
a new balance, another perspective, a third possibility or moment.20 This third nected fields: the theoretical positioning, concerning the formulation of my ontolog-
position, according to Soja, is not a simple addition to the two others, it belongs to ical and epistemological perspective; the particular context that I wished to address;
both of them and therefore breaks the oppositional composition. It does, in this and, as a third category, the related activities in education and design practice.
way, provide an open alternative.21 This idea of methodological openness created Under the first heading, the theoretical positioning, I noted as a starting point:
by a third moment is crucial to be able to address the ambiguities that I have Architecture is not only a practice concerned with physical, measurable construc-
intended to bring to the fore in this work. Indeed, I do not want to discuss the sub- tion. Architecture deals with human experience of the physical environment. The
ject-object, reader-writer and reality-imagination pairs as opposites, but rather ontological perspective of this work concerns the experiential aspects of architec-
ture, and relates to the discourse of phenomenology of perception.
20 Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los-Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Malden,
Massachusetts 1996, p. 60. Soja shows, for instance, how social space in Lefebvres writing
is distinguishable from mental and physical space, yet it also encompasses them. In The 22 Angelika Corbineau-Hoffmann, Architekturen der Vorstellung. Anstze zu einer
Production of Space, Lefebvre indeed continuously brings up such triads: mental-physical- Geschichte architektonische Motive in der Literatur. in: Winfried Nerdinger (ed.) Architektur
social space, conceived-perceived-lived. As for Sojas own work, his key triad concerns the wie sie im Buche steht, Fiktive Bauten und Stdte in der Literatur, Architekturmuseum der
theoretical notions of social-spatial-historical, while his termThirdspace indeed is intended Technische Universitt Mnchen, Verlag Anton Pustet, 2007, pp. 27-28 (translation from
to break open the common ways space is thought. German KMH)
21 Ibidem, p.61 23 Ibidem, p. 38

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I stated that place should be seen as a complex stratified phenomenon, a physical rather, by the playful use of constraints. The structure of the chapters, the order
structure bearing layers of history, atmosphere and lived space. With that in mind, of the paragraphs, the titles and the amount of space used for each fragment were
I stated that my contribution to knowledge would be to address the need to develop all consciously defined and positioned as in a juggling game: carefully playing with
different ways to measure and analyse place, and to explore different instruments weight and speed while balancing suspense. In the final phase of my project, steps
to do so. Second, to frame the context of the current urban and architectural debate towards the possible implications had to be considered. The notion of Prescrip-
that I wished to contribute to, I formulated the following themes: the debate on tion, as developed in the chapter with the same title, was defined as the act of imag-
urban regeneration, as an urgent and topical context in which the need for new ining new situations, rather than as the literal writing of a recipe. In literature,
approaches was expressed; the public realm, as the social dimension of archi- the chronotope as the intellectual construction of a world-view has been a useful
tecture and the city precisely the place of intersection between the individual notion to discuss such imaginations, as well as the concept of scenario writing. In
and the collective, the subject and the object, the author and the reader; and the my research project, I indeed had the task to imagine how new, possible realities
third, but overarching theme of literature as a source for instruments and inspira- could be based on the knowledge that had been acquired and on the transcrip-
tion. These themes, together with the theoretical positioning, have been present tions that had been undertaken from one discipline to the other. Through on-site
throughout the whole process of this work, and have played a role as a filter for case studies with students in my seminars and design studios at Delft University
the third part: the selection of related activities in education and design practice. of Technology, I have been able to test the techniques and insights developed in
These activities, such as workshops with students, design studies or participation this work, indeed developing scenarios appropriate for the tasks at hand. However,
in conferences, allowed me to explore themes, methods and ideas. have decided to limit the amount of attention devoted to such exercises and sce-
narios, as I intended to present my framework on another level: as a chronotope
The parallel paths I have followed in the course of this work (theoretical position- can accommodate a large variety of stories, I have attempted to outline an intellec-
ing, thematic explorations and related activities have indeed led to another triad tual construction in which the different notions and insights that are brought into
of parallel paths: description, transcription and prescription. This triad is more play can become operational for multiple tasks that architects, urban planners and
than an organizational model alone; it has become a method of research in itself, other professionals dealing with the built environment are facing, today and in the
a sequence that allowed me to make the necessary steps in the process, while the future.
30 literary tools discussed in this sequence of chapters were simultaneously used 31
in the process of the writing itself. If description is linked to observation, in the
process of the research it has been the first step of reading and observing the field
upon which I wished to operate. In this phase, the related literary skills of meticu-
lous observation and evocative description were carried out in relation to the
sources read and the themes explored. Observation can be understood as a form
of close reading this entailed the very precisely observation of detailed informa-
tion while mapping out the field of possible connections. Meanwhile, rather than
limiting my reading to the field of theory, I literally went out to observe the social
and spatial context of this work: observing the spaces, scenes and processes of
urban regeneration. In this phase, it was important to use different techniques of
making notes: both using the flow of associative writing and making detailed lists
of the observed spatial and social phenomena. Transcription, then, was the step to
transcribe the knowledge from this first observational step to the specific task at
hand for instance, to link the literary instruments that I had studied to architec-
tural questions. While I have discussed narrative as one of the key notions in the
chapter entitled Transcription, precisely this notion of narrative the composi-
tion of sequences, of the structure along which events take place was crucial in
the second phase of my work. Here, the storyline was composed not as a singular
narrative, developing a linear argument, but as an essentially spatial construc-
tion, which can be viewed from different perspectives, offering multiple narra-
tives. This act of composition was strongly characterized by an aspect of play, or
Departure ~ Urban Literacy
1.3 Departure While the gaze of the literary writer offers a central perspective in this work, I
am indebted to the works of a number of philosophers and spatial theorists who
have provided me with the theoretical frame of reference necessary to connect the
insights from literature to theoretical discourse concerning the experience, use
1.3.1 precedents and predecessors and imagination of architecture. Especially the discourse on the phenomenology of
architecture has been of great importance in enabling this work to find its ground-
ing. The very point of departure for phenomenological thought regarding archi-
Before entering these paths, I need to map out the most important voices that have tectural perception is the work of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who placed
served as continuous points of reference during my journey. The frame of refer- embodied experience at the centre of his philosophical thinking. His notion
ence for this work is a mixture of philosophical, sociological, architectural and lit- of description, an important first step in his phenomenological method, has
erary sources, without foregrounding one or the other. Questions from the field of become an important step in developing the theoretical framework of this thesis.25
architecture and urban planning are connected to literary viewpoints, and placed Gaston Bachelards search for a phenomenology of the poetic imagination has
in a theoretical context provided by philosophical and sociological theories. By enabled me to make important connections between literature and the experience
making a number of connections between existing concepts and disciplines I hope of architecture. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard speaks of transsubjectiv-
to open new perspectives rather than solidifying them. Instead of aiming to offer ity, and argues that phenomenology is the only academic arena that provides the
an entirely new theoretical perspective, I thus draw on existing theories. By bring- possibility of conceptualizing the subjectivity of the poetic experience.26 Naturally,
ing these theories together, rearranging them and reinterpreting them, showing I have followed a number of architects and writers who have further discussed phe-
their reciprocity and connections, my intention is to place them in a new light to nomenology in the field of architecture. Of these writers, Alberto Perez-Gomez and
offer an alternative way of teaching, practicing and thinking about architecture. Juhani Pallasmaa27 have also provided inspirational insights for this work. Regard-
Literary works, such as novels, poetry and other writings on places and spaces ing sensory perception and other experiential aspects of architecture and urban
thus function as a key source for study, intellectual reflection and inspiration. I places I have learned much from the writings of Danish architects and planners
have to acknowledge here, that my choice of literary sources is to a certain extent Steen Eiler Rasmussen and Jan Gehl.28 Human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan has, through
32 arbitrary. Of course, a number of usual suspects in the field of literature, such his insightful books such as Topophilia and Space and Place, taught me much about 33
as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Walter Benjamin and Italo Calvino feature in this the emotional relationship between people and places. Another field of theory to
work. However, I chose not to devote an extensive amount of attention to them, as which I owe a debt of inspiration is that of spatial thought, particularly connect-
other scholars have already discussed their work in detail. Instead I have chosen to ing space with its social components. An important source of inspiration for this
bring other works and literary positions to the fore, which have been less discussed project has been Michel de Certeaus The Practice of Everyday Life.29 His insights
in the field of architecture, such as the experimental work of Oulipo or the work of concerning users practices, specifically the role of stories in understanding urban
South American magic realist writers. Admittedly, my perspective is determined spaces at different levels, have provided clues for the use of literary tools in urban
by my own cultural and geographical background. The literary sources discussed in
this work derive predominantly from Northwest European literary culture, and the 25 This phenomenological position will be present throughout this work, and will most
work is relatively ignorant to other, for example Asian perspectives.24 Specifically, a thoroughly be discussed in the chapter Description.
large number of the literary references in this work concern Dutch literary works. I 26 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston Mass, 1994 [1964], p. xix: Only
am certain that many appropriate references could also be found in the exhaustive phenomenology -- that is to say, consideration of the onset of the image in an individual con-
sciousness -- can help us restore the subjectivity of images and to measure their fullness, their
amount of literature by many other writers from all over the world many of which
strength and their transsubjectivity.
I have simply not yet encountered in my readings. Also, as I have noticed along the 27 For instance: Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Prez-Gomez, Questions of Perception:
way, the more we read, the more we become aware of all the books well never be Phenomenology of Architecture, A+U July 1994 (special issue); Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age
able to read. Rather than claiming with this work to be a specialist in literature, I of Divided Representation The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production, MIT Press, 2004;
trust this to be indeed a place of departure for many more journeys in the world of See also the concise essay by Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses,
literature. London, 1996
28 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture. London 1959; reprint Cambridge, Mass.
(MIT Press) 1993; Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings. Using Public Space, Danish Architectural
24 While the urban and architectural places described in these literary sources are most Press, Copenhagen 2006 [1971]
probably also culturally and geographically determined, I assume that the scriptive tools that 29 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley,
writers use are more general. 1988, p.xxi [1984, original version in French: Arts de faire, 1984]

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


analysis and practice. Along the way of this research process, I realized how much on the idea of writing place or site-specific writing in relation to literature.36
the thinking of Henri Lefebvre resonates throughout my work. Unintended, he Recently, as a result of a project at the Faculty of Architecture in Munich, an
has become one of the protagonists of my plea for the multiperspectival approach extensive publication appeared in German, discussing the reciprocal relation-
to contemporary questions of urban experience. Through his ideas on lived expe- ship between imagined and real architectural spaces. Next to essays exploring, for
rience, the social aspects of space, and spatial imagination, his critical thinking instance, the roles of architecture in literature, the book presents a large number
about space has become not so much the leading thread as rather a constant voice of models and drawings as responses to literary texts, as well as examples of draw-
of reference.30 ings by literary writers and vice versa.37 Portuguese architect Pedro Gadanho has
also provided interesting reflections on architecture and fiction in his Booka-
Of course, I am not the first to draw on the connection between architecture, city zine series Beyond,38 while the first international conference on Architecture and
and literature. Sociologists and philosophers have often deployed literary refer- Fiction in Lisbon in 2010 was his initiative. In the academic architectural circles
ences to support their claims about life in the modern city.31 More specifically, in the Netherlands and Belgium, Bart Verschaffel, Geert Bekaert, Wim van den
researchers from the fields of architecture and literature have drawn in detail from Bergh, Ton Verstegen and Gijs Wallis de Vries have touched upon the theme in their
the connections between the two domains. In the 1970s, Ellen Eve Frank was one of teaching and writing. Dutch philosopher Ren Boomkens showed, through the
the first scholars to explore the connection between architecture and literature. In writings of Walter Benjamin, how the boulevards of late nineteenth-century Paris
her study Literary Architecture, she brought to the fore the architectural features provided the backdrop for a new sort of public life.39 Belgian literary theorist Bart
in the literary work of the writers Walter Pater, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marcel Keunen described how the early metropolis has been depicted in literature,40 while
Proust and Henry James.32 Jennifer Bloomer, in her research on architecture and Belgian architects Wim Cuyvers and Christophe van Gerrewey, each in their own
text, explored how literature can be like architecture in terms of construction, way, touched upon the relation between architecture and literature as well: Cuyvers
assemblage and use of analogy; she compared, for instance, the complex spatial by transcribing literary images and insight into design, while reflecting on archi-
constructions of James Joyces writings to Piranesis etchings.33 American scholar tecture by means of text;41 Van Gerrewey by writing architectural fiction as a form
Marilyn Chandler discussed how dwelling featured in American literature.34 In of architectural criticism.42 Although in this work, I have not fully addressed the
Europe, the use of writing as a tool in the analysis of places has been studied by work of all these scholars and architects in detail, I do gratefully acknowledge their
34 Bartlett professor of architecture Jane Rendell, who uses literary techniques not endeavours in introducing literature in architectural thought. While their work is 35
only to analyse urban sites but also as a form of art critique. Katja Grillner of KTH often very specific, for instance investigating the presence of architectural notions
Stockholm also sees writing as a productive tool in architectural research. Her in specific works of literature, my attempt has been to broaden such perspectives
dissertation made use of dialogue as a literary form, which allowed her to explore to discuss more generally the merits that a literary approach has to offer to under-
different positions, both historical and contemporary, in landscape analysis.35 stand and address the experiential aspects of architecture.
Finnish geographers Pauli Tapani Karjalainen and Paivi Kymlainen have focused
36 See for example Katja Grillner, Writing Architecture, in: 01.AKAD Beginnings- Experimental
Research in Architecture and Design, AKAD, Stockholm 2005, pp. 64-67; Jane Rendell, Writing
in place of speaking, in: Sharon Kivland (ed.), Transmission: Speaking and Listening, Sheffield
30 However, this work is not to be seen as a scholarly work on Lefebvres theories; other 2003; Pivi Kymalinen, Geographies in Writing- Re-imagining place, Nordia Geographical Publi-
researchers have provided most interesting in-depth readings of Lefebvres work. See for cations, Oulu, 2005
instance the recently published dissertations of Lukasz Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space: Ar- 37 Winfried Nerdinger (ed.) Architektur wie sie im Buche steht, Fiktive Bauten und Stdte in der
chitecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory, University of Minnesota Press 2011 Literatur, Architekturmuseum der Technische Universitt Mnchen, Verlag Anton Pustet, 2007
(forthcoming) and Panu Lehtovuori, Experience and Conflict: The Production of Urban Space, 38 Pedro Gadanho (ed.) Beyond. Shortstories on the post-contemporary, SUN Publishers,
Ashgate, London 2010 Amsterdam, 2009-2010
31 In this work, I refer for instance to the writings of sociologist Richard Sennett, and to 39 For a discussion of the development of modern Paris and Haussmanns influence on the
philosopher Gilles Deleuzes idea that writers can be seen as symptomatolosigsts of society. experience of the public, see Ren Boomkens, Een drempelwereld. Moderne ervaring en stedelijke
32 Ellen Eve Frank.Literary Architecture: Essays Toward a Tradition: Walter Pater, Gerard Manley openbaarheid. Rotterdam (NAI uitgevers) 1998, pp. 60-64.
Hopkins, Marcel Proust, Henry James.University of California Press, Berkeley 1979 40 Bart Keunen, De Verbeelding van de Grootstad. Stads- en wereldbeelden in het proza van de
33 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The (s)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University moderniteit, VUB Press, Gent University, Brussels 2000 [The Imagination of the Metropolis. City-
Press, New Haven/London, 1993 and Worldviews in the prose of modernity]
34 Marilyn R. Chandler, Dwelling in the Text. Houses in American fiction, University of California 41 Wim Cuyvers, Tekst over Tekst, Stroom/Voorkamer, The Hague 2004
Press, Berkeley, 1991 42 Christophe van Gerrewey, Werkelijkheid zonder weerga. Fictionele architectuurkritieken, WZW
35 Katja Grillner, Ramble, Linger and Gaze, KTH Department of Architecture, Stockholm, 2000 Editions&Productions, Gent, 2004, published as issue #65 of the series Vlees & Beton.

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


1.3.2 coming to terms bvre, who states that space, by definition, is socially produced, and thus produced
by its users and inhabitants: the user can be seen as a co-producer of place it
is only through him or her that places become meaningful. Similarly, Michel de
Now that a number of important voices that have influenced this work have already Certeau addresses the spatial practices of daily life, such as walking, talking and
come to the fore, I wish to say a few more words about the thematic foundations on storytelling as valuable sources for understanding the city. Important when con-
which this bridge has been built. Especially when working in a field of tension sidering the role of the user are also the gradations between what is public, private
between the disciplines of architecture and literature, when making sidesteps or collective, and particularly the notion of the public realm. Indeed, such notions
to philosophy and critical theory, and when aiming to discuss issues of ambigu- make clear that place is never neutral: it is owned, used, experienced, shared, con-
ity, there is the risk of getting lost in a confusion of tongues. Therefore, I wish to quered or defended by people.
highlight a number of terms that I will use throughout this work. Recurring themes
in this endeavour are lived experience, use and imagination. Also my deliberate The third term that I wish to clarify is imagination. I have highlighted imagina-
choice to use the notion place, rather than space, which will be explained here. tion as the creative activity of both writers and designers that is inextricably bound
Finally, I will shine a light on my understanding of literature and literary writers. with the making of new situations - whether this concerns stories or new spatial
When speaking of the lived experience of place, I refer to the way places nestle realities. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard speaks of the poetic imagina-
in peoples minds; how colours, smells, sounds and materials take part in this tion as a spark of the soul, a sudden moment when an unusual image appears to
process. I recall the coast of a Nordic city in summer, the sound of my footsteps, the poet.44 Imagination is thus seen as a creative act, as the capability to receive
the ticking of ropes against masts, the silence of water, the soft murmuring of or produce original images. Imagination is a powerful human skill, much under-
people. I feel rough brickwork touching the palm of my hand when I walk past the estimated in society and discourse, as Juhani Pallasmaa argues in his book about
wall of a summer house, the uneven ground of sand and rocks under my feet; I imaginations and imagery in architecture.45 The capacity to produce mental images
see reflections of changing traffic lights in glass and steel faades at the crossing is key to every form of cultural production, such as poetry, literature, theatre or
point of a road in a vibrant town in central Europe; I smell The Hague in spring, architecture. Literary works of fiction and poetry are by definition mental worlds
the wet streets after rain, the salty air, the linden trees. Lived experience connects created by the imagination of the writer however, different degrees of imagina-
36 to the notion of perception as theorized in Merleau-Pontys philosophical work tive power can be distinguished in the extent that these mental worlds are related 37
Phenomenology of Perception. Indeed, sensory perceptions play an important role in to reality. In the chapter Prescription, I will further draw on literary orientations
the lived experience of places. However, lived experience is more than perception such as the surrealist movement, which placed imagination at the very centre of its
alone: it is intrinsically related to the emotional responses that people develop to creative activity. Regarding the difference between reality and imagination, Pal-
the places they visit, to memory, stories and myths. Henri Lefebvres definition of lasmaa refers to Jean-Paul Sartres discussion on the imagination in The Psychol-
lived space, introduced in The Production of Space, points at a form of social space ogy of Imagination,46 stating that perception is directly related to the real world, to
that encompasses the way in which space is experienced, remembered and lived the embodied, material reality, while imagination refers to an other world. This
through by inhabitants and users.43 When using the term experience or experi- other world may be rooted in reality or may project future realities but it never
ential in this work, I refer to this broad notion of experience, including both per- coincides completely with the real world. Precisely this field of tension between
ceived and lived aspects. reality and imagination is at stake in architecture: when designing new spatial
situations, drawing the outlines of something that does not yet exist. In this work,
A second theme present in this work is the use of place, the activity of people imagination is thus seen as a creative act of fiction: the imagination of another sit-
inhabiting, using or passing it. Even if architecture is generally considered stable, uation, another world if you will, that is not yet existent, but that is rooted, perhaps,
built of matter, it becomes dynamic through the activity, people, movements and in an existing reality.
events it accommodates. In the field of sociology and philosophy, the role of archi-
tecture as a setting for human life, connecting spaces, people and activities, has
been intensively discussed. Therefore, when addressing the social aspects of place 44 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. The classic look at how we experience intimate places,
in this work, I refer to notions derived from these fields. The idea of social space, Beacon Press, Boston 1994 [1964] [La potique despace, Paris 1958]
45 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image. Imagination and Imagery in Architecture, AD Primers,
for instance, comes to the fore in the theories of the before mentioned Henri Lefe-
Wiley, Chichester 2011
46 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Psychology of Imagination,Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, 1948, as quoted
43 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production in Juhani Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image. Imagination and Imagery in Architecture, AD Primers,
despace, Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974] Wiley, Chichester 2011, pp. 33-34

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


Whether the spatial examples mentioned in this work concern architectural the issue of semiotics has been an intensely discussed theme at the crossing point
objects, urban scenes, or landscapes, they always have in common the focus on of architecture and literature. For this work, I have chosen to leave these themes
place. However, in the architectural debate as well as in philosophical discourse, aside, and to focus on another issue, namely the modus operandi of the literary
space has become a dominant notion over place as has been shown by the phi- writer the way a literary writer observes, describes and imagines the world, and
losopher Edward S. Casey, who in his seminal book The Fate of Place has argued particularly the built environment. When speaking of a literary gaze or a literary
for a revaluation of the concept of place. Place, as he argues, is more connected to approach, I thus mean that such a gaze or approach is informed by the point of view
lived experience, to the relation that people have with their environment. It is his of the literary writer. Acknowledging that, of course, the literary writer does not
definition of place that I make use of in this work. It has to be noted, however, that exist, I do attribute some skills to literary writers in general, and I assume that they
space and place are used in different ways by different authors and in different share, to some extent, a number of techniques. Inevitable for a work like this, sup-
fields. For instance, Michel de Certeau, an author much present in this work, states ported by a wide range of sources, I will often refer to authors and writers. While
instead that space is a practiced place. For him, place is the mere location, the both words are commonly used as synonyms, I have attempted to allocate the word
neutral site upon which spatial practices may develop. The practices bring about writer to literary writers, and to use the word author in a broader sense, for authors
movements and events in other words, they make places dynamic. Henri Lefe- in other fields.
bvre, in his conceptualization of social space, which is presented in this work as
well, indeed also utilizes the term space. However, his lived space, a notion that I
will frequently refer to, has strong placial qualities: it is site-specific, experienced
and lived through by its users and producers. In this work I have chosen to use the 1.3.3 projects on the way
word place rather than space, because I understand place as site-specific, loaded
with meaning attributed to it by users and inhabitants, and therefore socially
engaged. I understand space as a more abstract notion, which can be described in The activities connected to this work took place on different levels: in academic
vectors and measurements, and has less to do with the site-specific lived aspects thought, in education and in design practice. They did not offer directly measur-
of architectural experience that I am interested in. Three other notions connected able results like the data and diagrams of scientific experiments, but the thoughts
38 to place-attachment and lived experience may clarify my position regarding place: and insights developed through these activities form the humus of this work. The 39
Christian Norberg-Schulzs notion of the Genius Loci, Yi-Fu Tuans concept topo- academic activities concerned theoretical readings and reflections. An impor-
philia; and Gernot Bhmes understanding of atmosphere.47 The term Genius Loci tant part of the research process has been the academic exchange with colleague
points at the spirit of place, suggesting that place indeed is lived. According to researchers, architects and editors. In this respect, my involvement in the Archi-
Norberg-Schulz, place is thus more than an abstract location: it is built out of con- tectural Positions project at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Tech-
crete, perceivable characteristics that people psychologically relate to. He argues nology, consisting of a series of seminars around the theme of architecture and the
that place has an existential meaning: human identity is strongly connected to the public sphere in 2007 and the publications of an anthology on the same theme,49
identity of place. The notion Topophilia embroiders on this connection between was an excellent way to deepen my understanding of the relation between archi-
people and place, and points at the love that people have for places. Atmosphere, as tecture and the public sphere, to reflect on theoretical notions, and to learn from
defined by Gernot Bhme,48 entails two sides of the lived experience of place: the the different positions that architects take in this field. The editorial board of the
perceived reality and the moods and affects of the perceiving subjects. In Bhmes architecture journal OASE served as a platform for academic reflection on a wide
view, the subject-object relation is thus crucial for the understanding of atmos- range of topics. The editorship of issues on, for instance, Architecture & Literature,
phere and the situatedness of people. Public Space and the Public Sphere, and Productive Uncertainty, were intensive pro-
jects that, by means of discussions, critical reading and reflection, helped me to
Finally, I shall devote a few words to my use of terms connected to literature and set my field of reference and sharpen my definitions. Teaching, in different forms,
writers. In this work I use a broad definition of literature, as the artistic discipline has been an ongoing activity throughout the whole process. It has offered a broad
of writing fiction, novels, poetry and the like. I am aware that earlier investigations field to test the power of the concepts developed through this work in the context of
into the parallels between architecture and literature have included the idea of specific sites and assignments. For example, the Public Realm diploma studios that
architecture as a language, or have explored syntax for its compositional value. Also I taught in Delft between 2005 and 2011 all dealt with urban regeneration projects.
47 The here mentioned theoretical positions will be discussed in further detail in the chapter
Description of this work. 49 Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds), Architectural Positions: Architecture,
48 Gernot Bhme, Architektur und Atmosphre, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Mnchen, 2006 Modernity and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers, Nijmegen 2009

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It was through these projects that I could formulate the need for an alternative, a design team of Stroom to propose a strategy for the public domain in Schevenin-
more site-specific and more user-oriented approach to urban regeneration. The gen-bad, the beach resort of The Hague.54
studio also addressed the topicality of the theme, by collaborating with local parties
such as the municipality and housing corporations. The City & Literature studio, I have decided not to include all the material of these exploratory projects in this
an elective master course I initiated and taught in Delft, served as a laboratory of dissertation, even if they are of interest to explain how the ideas developed in this
reading, creative writing, exploring architectures relation to literature, and testing work can be used in practice. Instead, I have tried to keep the work concise. The
the use of literary techniques as design tools. Intensive workshops, both in Delft above-mentioned design projects might also, precisely through their site-spec-
and abroad, gave the opportunity to focus on a central tool or concept, by actively ificity, limit the scope for the reader. I did include a selection of the educational
discussing its implications with students, using it to explore a territory, and pro- projects, because these allow me to show how the knowledge developed in this work
jecting it on a specific assignment. can be conveyed to (future) practitioners of spatial design.

Finally, it was in design practice that the topicality of the theme and the useful-
ness of the approach could be tested. In the early stage of this project, I combined
the theoretical work with architectural practice. The NDSM project in Amsterdam
was an urban regeneration project, in which the reuse of the former ship wharf as
a cultural breeding place was seen as a catalyst for larger urban redevelopments in
the area, the former industrial docks of Amsterdam North. Our architecture studio
De Ruimte50 was involved in the development of the whole wharf, and designed and
built the skatepark, which opened in 2004. From this position, it was possible to
be closely involved in such an alternative approach to urban regeneration, and be
aware of its strengths and vulnerabilities. In other urban regeneration projects,
my involvement was on a more conceptual level: dealing with analysis and projec-
40 tion rather than with the construction process itself. In 2006-2007, I was part of a 41
design team that explored the potential development of a large industrial peninsula
in Tallinn.51 We developed urban scenarios in relation to specific themes that arose
from a focused reading of the site as well as of the uncertainties that the urban
development of Tallinn was facing. In Helsinki, I was able to test literary tools in
the critical analysis of Helsinkis plans for redevelopment of harbour area Kalasa-
tama. These critical investigations led to the formulation of an alternative strategy,
which generated a debate in the Finnish architectural review ARK with the City
Planning Office.52 Other activities that allowed me to confront my ideas with the
reality of current urban developments included taking part in the jury process of a
competition for waterfront developments in Amsterdam North53 and taking part in
50 Architecture Studio de Ruimte was a collective of Iris de Kievith, Iris Schutten, Sebas
Veldhuisen, Job Nieman and myself, founded in 1994 in The Hague by Schutten, de Kievith
and Veldhuisen. Projects included urban interventions and the re-use of buildings, with an
emphasis on social and technological sustainability.
51 Urban study Ecobay for Paljassaare, Tallinn, Estonia, with 3+1 architects in Tallinn, NFA
from Paris and Livady architects from Helsinki, 2006-2007
52 These investigations were carried out with the team of Studio Butter-Briceo, Helsinki.
The results were published as: Klaske Havik, Peter Ch. Butter, Juan-Luis Briceno, Kalasatama
reconsidered, in ARK Finnish Architectural Review 2/2009, pp. 76-79
53 NAi-Ymere competition project Open Fort 400, 2009. I was involved as secretary of the jury. 54 Design research team Atelier Naar Scheveningen has been initiated by Stroom The Hague in
The report has been published in Waterfront Visions. Transformations in North Amsterdam, NAi 2011 and consists of Marcel Musch, Kai van Hasselt, Han Dijk, Arjan Harbers, Coen-Martijn
Publishers, Rotterdam 2009 Hofland and myself.

Departure ~ Urban Literacy


2.1 description
2 DESCRIPTION
2.1.1 Writing as: evocative description

. . . this is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name
it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours,
the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a
continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simul-
taneously, anything other than an alphabet?55

In Species of Spaces,56 Polish-French writer Georges Perec attempts to describe various kinds
of spaces, sorted in scale from the space of the page, through spaces such as the bedroom,
the apartment building and the city, to infinite space. Perec describes these spaces in various
ways: by providing a seemingly objective survey of details, by giving names, by measuring,
by tracing activities during a day, by describing memories of spaces, by imagining. Space
begins with words, states Perec, and, if it is indeed by words that spaces can begin to exist, I
would start here my argument that it is through evocative description that we can to come to
understand how architecture is used, experienced and imagined. In Latin, the verb scribere
42 means not only to write, but also to scratch: the physical act of scratching figures or letters on 43
a surface. In that sense, the activity of writing and that of drawing appear to be closely related.
De-scribere, then, becomes to write-scratch as or from something: an exemplar or model, to
copy.57 Indeed, description is usually related to an object, one describes something in such a
detailed or vivid way that it can be imagined; from the description, the reader can draw a
picture of the object in his mind as if it were real. Thus, in the etymological sense of the word,
a description of a place is a copy of that place in words. Words that, in turn, evoke the image of
the place in the mind of the reader. Therefore, to be able to describe, be it in text or in drawing
(scratching), one has to be able to observe, and to perceive the object in all its complexity. In
order to understand spaces and places, and to understand how we live them, one should
start by closely observing them, by identifying their spatial characteristics, as well as their
atmosphere and the activities and trajectories of their inhabitants. In this chapter, I will first
discuss evocative description in the sense of writing as, highlighting the capacity of literary
writers to picture vivid accounts of places; then, I will use the idea of writing from to show how
different purposes in a novel can be served by architectural descriptions; and finally, I will

55 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, London 2008, p. 13 [Espces d espace , Editions Galile,
Paris 1974]. The naming of places will be a recurring theme in this work; the work of Borges and specifically the
Aleph will again appear in the chapter Prescription.
56 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, London 2008, p. 13 [Espces d espace , Editions Galile,
Paris 1974]
57 Eric Partridge (ed), Origins, a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Greenwich House, New York
1983, p.598

description ~ Urban Literacy


argue that to be able to produce evocative descriptions, writers cannot do without the skills of seen as the form of literature in which the subject-object inversions come most fully into play.
observation and perception. However, Bachelards question is also relevant on a more general level: it essentially points at
the complexity of creation and experience of a work, either a work of literature, or a work of
Literary writers are uniquely qualified to observe and describe the spaces in which they move art or architecture: the tension between the individual maker and the unknown collective of
places, buildings and landscapes on several levels. Their descriptions are often very de- the readers, users or consumers. Indeed, a literary description, being the product of the per-
tailed, carefully sketching an image of the place and evoking a certain atmosphere. Indeed, sonal imagination of a writer, can reach a large audience of readers, and make them become
several theorists studying the interplay between people and their surroundings suggest that emotionally involved.
literature could be an important source of information. Human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, who
is interested in how people relate to places, how they perceive and remember their physical en- Only seldom can literary writers be said to offer a neutral account of the places they describe;
vironment, writes: the forceful and precise articulation of environmental attitudes requires rather, they bring to light aspects of atmosphere, activities, memories, rituals and emotion.
high verbal skills. Literature rather than social science surveys provides us with the detailed Mere description, in a scientific, objectified way, does not allow for such lived accounts of
and finely shaded information on how individuals perceive their worlds.58 Yi-Fu Tuan often how people experience space. It is the quality of literary descriptions that they evoke. To evoke
refers to the capacity of the literary writer to record intricate worlds of human experience.59 is to bring to mind a memory or feeling . . . to provoke a particular reaction or feeling; to make
In his book Topophilia, which discusses the intimate connection between places and people, beings appear who are normally invisible.63 Evocation is undoubtedly one of the indispen-
he states that: the ways in which people perceive and evaluate [are] varied. No two persons sable qualities of good poets and literary writers: through their evocative descriptions, the
see the same reality. No two social groups make precisely the same evaluation of the envi- reader is able to vividly imagine the spaces and places at stake. Likewise, the designs of archi-
ronment. The scientific view itself is culturally determined one possibility among many.60 tects, by means of sketches, models, drawings or text, also evoke a situation or atmosphere.
Finnish geographer Pauli Tapani Karjalainen also studies the link between people and their Indeed, in design projects, the architect is compelled to present buildings and spaces that do
environment, and sees how the meaning of places in peoples personal lives is reflected in not yet exist. Dutch architect Michiel Riedijk states that:
literature. For Karjalainen, literature is the key source for his notion of geobiography, which Evocation is a precondition for design. Every sketch, study or model aims to evoke an image
he defines as an expression of the course of life as it relates to the places lived.61 Indeed, in or the impact of something that will only exist in the future. It aims to evoke a world that will
literature this intimate bond between people and place, which is different for each and every not be real until the design has been executed in wood, masonry and glass. Designing implies
44 person, is sometimes evocatively described. In literary writings on places, however, precisely the orchestration of the imagination.64 45
this aspect of subjectivity lures around the corner, blurring the level of reality of the descrip-
tion. The places in novels, poems, biographies and letters indeed go without a sharp distinc- Such evocation requires more than just offering an image of a future materialized reality. Not
tion between reality and fiction. Places in literature can exist in reality, or find their ground, only should design evoke a future material reality, but also a possible future experience or
partly or totally, in the imagination of their writer. When real places feature in novels, their sense of place. The architect, to some extent responsible for the environment in which people
depiction moves between the objective description of their characteristics and the descrip- live, needs to be able to describe this environment beyond the visible and the material: to
tion informed by the subjective experience of a (real or fictional) character. This tension also give an account of the spatial as well as the social and perceptual levels of his future creation.
exists between the collective and the individual: through literary description, the individual Therefore, if we indeed intend to use description as an operational concept in the spatial
account of a place (or activity, or event), be it based on the author or on a fictional character, design disciplines, the word evocative is important to use as an adjective. When looking at the
is communicable to the collective audience of the readers. French theorist Gaston Bachelard, evocative descriptions of architecture by literary writers, it becomes clear that architects can
who investigated the poetic imagination in relation to intimate spaces in his seminal book learn from their skills.
The Poetics of Space, called this exchange between the collective and the individual experience
transsubjectivity, wondering how such a singular, short-lived event [can] react on other The call for evocatively describing places is by no means a merely nostalgic one. Considering
minds and in other hearts.62 Bachelard speaks specifically of poetry, which may indeed be the current condition of a global and highly networked society, in which human interac-
tions seem to become less and less place-bound, it would seem that theories drawing on the
58 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia. A study of environmental perception, attitudes and values, University of Minnesota, intricate relationship between man and place have lost their relevance. I argue that the con-
Prentice hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1974, p.49 trary is true: in the era of globalization, evocative description of local specifics becomes more
59 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 1977, p.7 urgent than ever. In recent debate, an increase in attention for the local is noticeable, often
60 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia. A study of environmental perception, attitudes and values. University of Minnesota/
Prentice hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1974, p.5
61 Pauli Tapani Karjalainen, On Geo-biography, in Virve Sarapik and Kadri Tr (eds.), The City -- Topias 63 Encarta World English Dictionary: to evoke
and Reflections (conference book), Koht ja Paik / Place and Location III, Tallinn 2003, pp. 87-93 64 Michiel Riedijk, Wings of Beeswax, in: Architectural Positions. Architecture, modernity and the Public Sphere,
62 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [1964], pp. xviii-xix Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.), Sun Publishers, Amsterdam, 2009, p. 319

description ~ Urban Literacy


as a counterpoint to the global. The conference Global Places, Local Spaces,65 for example, held function.69 In this chapter I will illustrate some other ways in which evocative descriptions
at the Bartlett School of Planning in London in 2006, addressed this seemingly oppositional of places figure in literature. For instance, architectural descriptions in literature can serve
connection between the local and the global. Especially in large urban projects, sometimes memory, giving an account of a past or present world; they can be used to amplify the emo-
crossing national boundaries, the role of the local becomes all the more important. Dutch tions of the characters in a novel; they can strengthen a narrative by the symbolic meaning
cultural philosopher Ren Boomkens, who investigates the experience of public urban space, of buildings; they can reveal to the reader the structure of a novel or its parts, and thereby
has noticed a renewed interest in the 1980s in novels and documentaries highlighting local allow the reader to navigate; and they can play a role as generators of suspense. In regard to
practices, which corresponds with a critique on the rather distanced, generalizing approach memory, evocative descriptions of place in literature offer a way to record the character of
to the city that characterized modernist and functionalist thought.66 According to Boomkens a place at a moment in time, to maintain something of a physical reality of a certain era. It
the need for such local narratives is even more topical nowadays: they offer a sense of specific- has been argued that this focus on the historical aspect of places even distinguishes literary
ity in an ever globalizing culture. As Boomkens states: writers from architects: while architects may tend to have a fascination for the new, being
These are not attempts to glorify the local past, nor exercises in futile nostalgia, but attempts concerned with future situations, literary writers describe the complexity of the existing, the
to play out the confrontation between the new discontinuities of global urban culture and the nearly past, already disappearing world. In the words of Dutch architecture critic Gijs Wallis
fragile continuity of . . . traditional local culture. . . . The fact that we are still, to a certain extent, de Vries:
able to identify with that history, to feel attached to the life it represents, and feel at home in its The architect . . . draws the streets of the future and sees the city from a birds-eye perspective.
public sphere, depends completely on the fact that we are still able to resurrect the continuity His world comes. The world of the writer is todays, and that world passes. He has the gaze of
in ever new narratives on our urban culture, its practices and localities. 67 the pedestrian. . . . But precisely in this way he creates a world that remains.70

Indeed, parallel to global developments, evocative description can be used as a device to iden- In Species of Spaces, Georges Perec notes almost in despair how writing indeed allows retaining
tify and investigate local characteristics, as well as generating new connections between the a part of a fast changing world:
global and the local. Space melts like sand running through ones fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless
shreds: . . . To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a
few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.71
46 47
2.1.2 Writing from: architecture in literary descriptions In the novel Austerlitz, for instance, W.G. Sebald describes the memory of a number of places
through the looking glass of the protagonist Austerlitz, who is being followed by the narrator
on a journey through Europe, reconstructing the environments of his past. 72 The places are
Let us take a closer look at how places figure in the world of literature. It is argued that places described with the intensity of reviving memories. A similar effect takes place in the novel
are so present in literature because we tend to structure our memory on the basis of places.68 Istanbul by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.73 Here, the memories of the narrator run paral-
Naturally, in many literary writings the built environment is a dcor, generating a setting, lel to his memories of the city of his childhood, Istanbul. The city is portrayed by detailed
sketching an atmosphere in which the narrative unfolds. Here, architecture has an illustrative
69 In his extensive volume on the presence of architectural descriptions in novels, Winfried Nerdinger sums
up a number of functions that architectural descriptions can have in a novel: they can structure the course of
events in a novel, guide the gaze of the reader, generate the social context of the narrative, and give expression
to the characters, (op. cit. note 69, p.12). The Dutch writer Dirk van Weelden also addressed the ways in which
architecture is used in literature, including the illustrative function of architecture and the rethoric instrument of
navigation. Dirk van Weelden, Steden in een baan om de aarde [Cities in a course around the earth], in: Arjen
65 Planning Research Conference Global Places, Local Spaces, Bartlett School of Planning, London, April 5-7, Mulder, Dirk van Weelden (eds.), Architectuur&Literatuur, De Gids nr. 11, November 2004, p. 877
2006 70 Freely translated after Gijs Wallis de Vries, De literatuur in de architectuur [Literature in Architecture] in:
66 Ren Boomkens, Een Drempelwereld, Moderne ervaring en stedelijke openbaarheid, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, Arjen Mulder, Dirk van Weelden (eds.), Architectuur&Literatuur, De Gids nr. 11, November 2004, p. 901
1998, p. 34. 71 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, London 2008, pp. 90-91 [Espces d espace , Editions
67 Ren Boomkens, The Temporalities of the Public Sphere in: OASE77 Into the Open. Accommodating the Public, Galile, Paris 1974]
Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds (eds.), Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2008, pp. 18-19 72 W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, Carl Hansen Verlag, Mnchen 2001, (read: Dutch translation by Ria van Hengel:
68 Zum anderen kommen Bauten und Orten der dichterische Evokation durch Sprache oder Text besonders W.G.Sebald, Austerlitz, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2003)
entgegen, denn das menschlichen Gedchtnis ist topologisch, ortsbezogen strukturiert, states Winfried 73 Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul. Memories and the city, Knopf, New York 2005 [Original: Istanbul. Hatiralar ve sehir.
Nerdinger, in Architektur wie sie im Buche steht, Fiktive Bauten und Stdte in der Literatur, Architekturmuseum der Iletisim Yayincilik, Istanbul 2003] read: translation in Dutch by Hanneke van der Heijden: Orhan Pamuk,
Technische Universitt Mnchen, Verlag Anton Pustet, 2007, p.9 Istanbul. Herinneringen en de stad, De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam/Antwerpen 2005

description ~ Urban Literacy


descriptions of places and activities taking place through the eyes of the child and the grown- circle through the temple with wings flapping, sat for a moment on the ledge where the cupola rested on
up man. In Remembrance of Lost Times by Marcel Proust,74 which will be discussed in more the rotunda, then flew up an disappeared croaking through the blue opening.79
detail further in this chapter, descriptions of buildings and landscapes are used to construct
a sense of the passage of time. A quite different role that evocative descriptions of places can The churches in Rome and the sacral spaces in Jerusalem are evidently connected to the
play in amplifying the perceptions and emotions of the characters. In this context, Finnish theme of religion in this novel, just like the visit of the three secondary characters Onno,
geographer Pauli Tapani Karjalainen, who states that biography and geography are inextrica- Max and Ada to Cuba is connected to political motives. Even though at first sight they merely
bly linked in literature, 75 refers to the novel Urwind, by Finnish writer and poet Bo Carpelan, serve as a background rather than play a leading role, the architectural and urban spaces in
which describes the life, thoughts and states of mind of the protagonist over the course of a the novel are carefully chosen and evocatively described, and are inseparably related to the
year, mostly through describing spaces: the stairwell of an urban building, the sound of the unfolding of events in the narrative.
wind in a courtyard, the steps of the protagonist in a city square.76 The locations in the city of In some cases, architecture is almost literally used to structure the literary work. This instru-
Helsinki are described in a recognizable way, while these descriptions derive undeniably from mental use of architecture occurs, for example, in the genre of the Gothic Novel, in which the
a personal experience. Sensory perceptions of the urban and architectural space are linked to typology of the castle organizes both structure and atmosphere of the novel.80 In such novels,
a specific time or season, to memory and imagination. The descriptions of urban spaces in like The Castle of Otranto by Horace Wallpole, the dark atmosphere of a Castle with its crypts
the works of Hungarian writers Gyrgy Konrd and Pter Ndas are intensely internalized by and corridors serves as the perfect setting for mysterious crimes. Sometimes architecture is
their characters and it is precisely this that makes them so familiar. 77 The psychological effect used as structural model for a whole book, while architectural spaces are also used as a rhet-
of the corridors and rooms in a mental institution is intensely evoked in the descriptions of oric instrument of navigation,81 to memorize the structure of the narrative. This principle
protagonist Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.78 Another reason for a writer to of navigation by means of architecture is interestingly explained in the novel In Babylon by
choose specific architectural and urban environments in literature may be their symbolic Dutch writer Marcel Mring, by protagonist Nathan who uses the tower of Babel to wander
function. In Harry Mulischs Dutch epos Discovery of Heaven, the choice of places where events through his memories:
occur are carefully chosen. In this book the exceptionally intelligent boy Quinten follows his I walked into this tower, across the mountain of sand and rubble that reached to the third gallery.
fascination for the spaces in Piranesis drawings, which leads him to important places in the Because I had been stowing memories in the tower ever since I was a child, I had to go a long way up
history of culture and religion in which, ultimately, Quinten himself becomes an important before I came to the section where I kept my stories. They lay, not only because I had stored them away at
48 actor. The strong symbolic meaning of the Pantheon in Rome is used to illustrate the critical a later date, but because the spot appealed to me, in the innermost system of spiralling corridors. It was 49
point when Onno, Quintens father, discovers his lost son in the crowd after a long period of visible from the outside, like the fragile shell of a derelict building. What were they for, all those crypts
separation. The black crow escaping through the hole in the roof of this building strengthens and niches? Who needed those endless corridors that wound, tunnel-like, through the stone colossus?
the symbolic power of this moment. I did.
As he crossed the threshold, the colossal empty space took his breath away. As the in the impenetrable I climbed from gallery to gallery, until I reached the place where the heart of the building pierced the
interior of a crystal, the shadowless light hung on the blond marble floor, against the columns and sky. It was the seventh circle, on the right was a section in scaffolding, on the left, a steep stone incline
alcoves and chapels, where the proud Roman gods had been replaced by humble Christian saints. The that led to several portals. I went through the middle one and turned left. Darkness hung between the
highest point of the cupola was occupied not by a keystone but by the blue sky, a round hole measuring damp walls. A couple of workers were standing next to a pillar with a trough of mortar. I passed them
almost thirty feet across, through which a diagonal beam of sunlight shone like an obelisk, producing a and went right, deeper into the depths. An empty corridor, swathed in flickering torchlight lay before me
dazzling egg on a damaged fresco. The cupola with the hole in it reminded him of an iris with a pupil: . . . I hurried through the corridor, the dark curve with the red-lit walls. Our family portrait, the faces
the temple was an eye, which he was now inside. From outside, the hole must be black. The building frozen in black and white. Zeno in Switzerland. In a room deep within the tower, the women of my life
was an observatory . . . at that moment the ebony-colored bird flew off the mans shoulder, described a were sitting side by side.82

74 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Gallimard, Paris 1919, [Dutch translation Op zoek naar de
verloren tijd, deel 1 De kant van Swann, De Bezige Bij , Amsterdam 2002 ; English edition: Remembrance of 79 Harry Mulisch, De ontdekking van de Hemel, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1999 (1992), pp. 712-713, English
Things Past. Volume 1: Swanns Way: Within a Budding Grove, Vintage, New York,] translation by Paul Vincent: Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven, Penguin books, New York 1997, pp.
75 Pauli Tapani Karjalainen, On Geo-biography, in Virve Sarapik and Kadri Tr (eds.), The City -- Topias 578-579
and Reflections (conference book), Koht ja Paik / Place and Location III, Tallinn 2003, pp. 87-93 80 Dirk van Weelden, Steden in een baan om de aarde [cities in a course around the earth], in: Arjen Mulder,
76 Bo Carpelan, Urwind, Helsinki, 1993, [English translation by David McDuff, Manchester 1996] Dirk van Weelden (eds.), Architectuur&Literatuur, De Gids nr. 11, November 2004, p. 878
77 Gyrgy Konrd, for example A Feast in the Garden, New York 1992 [1989]; Pter Ndas, De levensloper, boek 81 Ibidem, p. 877
over een jaar, Amsterdam 1997 [vknyv 87-88, Budapest 1989] 82 Marcel Mring, In Babylon, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1997, p. 309-310, English translation by Stacey Knecht:
78 Hannah Green, I never promised you a Rose Garden, London 1964 In Babylon, HarperCollins, New York 2001, p. 270-271

description ~ Urban Literacy


Remarkably, in this fragment the tower is not a mere construction. By mentioning the men at
work in the tower while Nathan traverses the space in search of his stories, the tower is evoca- 2.1.3 Close reading: observation and perception
tively described as an actual, lived space. Umberto Ecos novel The Name of the Rose resembles
such precedents: here, as well, the architectural specificity of the monastery is key to the entire
narrative, which unfolds in the monastery within the limited time span of seven days. The To describe, one has to develop a capacity to observe. In the academic field of linguistics and
novel is a genuine architectural novel, in its countless meticulous descriptions of space. Ar- literature, close reading is often used as a way to study a written source. By concentrating on
chitecture is here presented as the divine art of proportion: For architecture, among all the details, by finely observing which formulations and directions are chosen in the studied text,
arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe.83 one hopes to achieve a better understanding of the meaning of the text and of the authors in-
The narrative is punctuated with precise architectural descriptions, which help build up tentions. Also on a spatial level, when considering specific sites, a close reading of details, pat-
suspense: the reader memorizes architectural details that might offer clues to the crime: the terns and layers of meaning could be possible. Indeed, in order to evocatively describe places
height of the windows, the orientation of doors giving access to the main building of the in their novels, literary writers conduct a close reading of architectural and urban features.
abbey, secret corridors that might lead to the library, which is the most secretive and intrigu- They need to closely observe details and materiality, and consider how sensory experiences
ing place in the monastery and in the book. It is the architecture that renders the librarys of space are connected to feelings of intimacy, distance, fear, etcetera. Writers such as Charles
mystery, from its labyrinthine routing to its very details. Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin are often mentioned as the chroniqueurs of the rise of the
As we roamed, seeking the way, suddenly, in the center of one room, I felt an invisible hand stroke my modern city and of modern life.85 Rather than fiction, their writings are observations of urban
cheek, while a groan, not human and not animal, echoed in both that room and the next, as if a ghost life in the early twentieth-century metropolis, telling of the way the city is lived, the way the in-
were wandering from one to the other. I should have been prepared for the librarys surprises, but once dividual related to the masses in Baudelaire,86 and of the way new types of spaces invoke new
again I was terrified and leaped backward. William . . . held up the light and looked around. He raised types of behaviour in Walter Benjamins Arcades project, for instance.87 These writers have
one hand, examined the flame . . . then moistened a finger and held it straight in front of him. proven to be sharp readers of the modern age and its changing relation between man and
Its clear, he said then, and showed me two points, on opposite walls, at a mans height. Two narrow the city: they have had a strong capacity to observe the spatial practices connected to the new
slits opened there, and if you put your hand to them you could feel the cold air coming from outside. urban life. To Bart Keunen, who investigated how the early modern metropolis has been de-
Putting your ear to them, you could hear a rustling sound, as of wind blowing outside. picted in literature, Benjamins flaneur was a wanderer, perceiving artistically, poeticising the
50 The library must, of course, have a ventilation system, William said. Otherwise the atmosphere world. . . . The artistic flaneur reads each selection out of the urban macrocosm as an allegori- 51
would be stifling, especially in the summer. Moreover, those slits provide the right amount of humidity, cal sign that refers to the microcosm of psychological meanings.88 Benjamins poetic reading
so the parchments will not dry out. But the cleverness of the founders did not stop here. Placing the splits of the city contained many descriptions of material and behavioural details, as well as sensory
at certain angles, they made sure that on windy nights the gusts penetrating from these openings would experiences of urban space, such as sounds, smells and visual impressions. It is in these kinds
encounter other gusts, and swirl inside the sequence of rooms, producing the sounds we have heard. of personal descriptions of the experience of space that individuality and universality merge:
Which . . . increase the fear of the foolhardy who come in here, as we have, without knowing the place while the impressions are by definition the individual ones of the writer-observer, they evoke
well.84 memories of similar experiences of the reader. Intriguing about Walter Benjamins writings is
that he did not depict the modernity of the twentieth-century metropolis as something cold
Now that we have seen that architecture can play an important role in literature, a next step and rational, but rather as a dream-world: depicting the sounds, the noises and the stories.
is to see how architectural descriptions come about. In the next paragraphs I will take a close Benjamin had the dreamlike view of a poet: For Benjamin the metropolis is a dream-world,
look at the ways literary writers observe and describe spaces to the very detail, taking notice the intoxicating site of the phantasmagoric, the kaleidoscopic and the cacophonous.89
of the power of sensory experience, in which the relation between the perceiving subject and
the object of perception is explored.
85 See for example David Frisby, Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer,
and Benjamin, MIT press, Cambridge, Mass. 1986
86 Most notably the collection of poems Fleur du Mal (1857) and collection of prose-poems Spleen de Paris,
1869. In English translation by Walter Martin: Charles Baudelaire Complete poems, Routledge, New York, 2002
[1997]
87 Walter Benjamin, Das Passagenwerk, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1982 [1943-40]
88 Bart Keunen, De Verbeelding van de Grootstad. Stads- en wereldbeelden in het proza van de moderniteit, VUB
83 Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa , Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri-Bompiani, Sonzogno, 1980; English translation Press, Gent University, Brussels 2000 [The Imagination of the Metropolis. City- and Worldviews in the prose of
The Name of the rose, Helen and Kurt Wolff/ Harcourt, New York, 1983, p.26 modernity], p. 43
84 Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa , Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri-Bompiani, Sonzogno, 1980; English translation 89 Neil Leach, Re-thinking Architecture, a reader in cultural theory, Routledge, London / New York 2003 [1997],
The Name of the rose, Helen and Kurt Wolff/ Harcourt, New York, 1983, p.177 p24

description ~ Urban Literacy


For Benjamin, the city seemed to trigger associations; every sign or detail could generate day- that through detailed descriptions of the sensory experience of spaces, the degree of intimacy
dreams, thoughts and reflections.90 or distance was revealed. French writer Alain Robe-Grillet has used the description of visual
Like these observers, Italian novelist Italo Calvino has had a tremendous impact on architec- perception as core instrument in his novels. The novel Jealousy, for instance, consists largely
tural considerations about the modern city. Many of Calvinos essays and novels indeed show of meticulous descriptions of one single house. The size of rooms, the place of columns, the
a capacity of close reading, on different levels: from the smallest detail to the scale of the way the shadow changes during the day everything is described in great detail. Instead of
city, from specific sensory experiences to human activities. While Baudelaire and Benjamin describing any thoughts or emotions, the author only notes what can be seen in space and,
describe real places, however, Calvino allows fiction to play a much larger role in his spatial to a lesser extent, what can be heard in dialogue. In his introduction to a collection of Robe-
descriptions, continuously shifting between observation and imagination. In his best known Grillets work, Roland Barthes states that by the consequent use of the technique of describ-
book The Invisible Cities,91 Calvino describes the complexity of the city by isolating specific ing the visual appearance of spaces and things, the novel becomes mans direct experience
phenomena and exaggerating these in short stories about fictional cities. The city of Armilla,92 of what surrounds him.97 The reader, along with the writer, takes on a humble perspective:
for example, seems to exist only of its water system, its description features pipes, drains and We no longer look at the world with the eyes of a confessor, a doctor, or of God himself . . . but
ceramic sanitary objects. The city of Tamara93 is full of signs. The thick layer of billboards and with the eyes of a man walking in his city with no other horizon than the scene before him,
advertisements seems to hide its real nature. The city of Ersilia94 is described by the network no other power than that of his own eyes.98
of threads that reveal the connections between the inhabitants of the city: relationships of
family, trade or politics. In other words, in this city, only the normally invisible social networks While Robe-Grillet made the optical perception his literary trademark, Italo Calvino under-
are visible. Altogether, the 55 short stories form more than a rich collection of fairytale-like took the experiment to write separate texts addressing separate senses. In the book Under the
comments on urban phenomena; they also provide an evocative description of the complex- Jaguar Sun,99 each short story concentrates on one particular sense, such as sound, smell or
ity of the city of Venice. When close reading the book Invisible Cities with students, some taste, to give a detailed description of a space. In one part, for example, the acoustic character-
came to realize that: istics of an architectural space are described, as well as the sounds of activities taking place,
the city is not exposed as a unity but as a wide range of emotions, memories, secrets, histories thereby forming an evocative aural picture of the space. The space becomes one big auricle,
and connections, that can be found in the reality around us. A gigantic exploded view where a visualized cacophony. The sound expends the space, the silence makes it shrink or even
the parts are taken out of the whole. It is the Venice we experience . . . we walk through, a disappear, wrote one of the students who read the book in my course on architecture and
52 place where we love, a city that we dream. When we look under the surface we see the imagi- literature.100 In the novel The Quiet Girl, Danish writer Peter Heg not only describes the sound 53
nary Venice, the invisible Venice, the poetic Venice.95 of architectural spaces, but also extends this to the urban level by presenting a character with
extraordinary auditory capacities, able to orient himself in the city through sound:
In The Hidden Dimension, anthropologist Edward T. Hall points at literature as a key to under- Listen, he said. There was no loud or distinct sound. It was an intricate curtain of muffled ringing
standing human perception. He states that literature is . . . a source of data on mans use of tones. The citys church bells chiming the sun to rest. The key they are tuned to becomes the tonic in a
his senses. 96 Indeed, literary writers need to use sensory clues to express how characters major or minor triad. An overtone, which is an octave plus a minor or a major third, varies along with
relate to their environment, or to the spatial setting of the book. Hall studied texts by among the tonic. The city is a sound map. Grundtvig Church. Tuned in D. And above that, the F-sharp is heard
others Henri Thoreau, Kafka and Mark Twain for their perceptual clues, and indeed found just as strongly. The church has only one huge bell. Its chimes could never be confused with those of the
Church of Our Savior. Each is unique in its own way. So if you talk on the phone at sunset, and listen
90 His fragmentary collection Einbahnstrae (One-Way Street) is a striking example of this associative way beyond the voice and compensate for the flat sound picture, you get an impression of where the person
of reading the city. Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstrae, Ernst Rowolt Verlag, Berlin 1928, read in Dutch: Walter on the other end is located on the sound map.101
Benjamin, Eenrichtingsstraat, Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen 1994
91 Italo Calvino, Le Citt Invisibili, Italy 1972, English translation: Invisible Cities, University of Michigan Presss
1974, read in Dutch: Italo Calvino, De onzichtbare steden, Atlas, Amsterdam/Antwerpen2007 [1981] 97 Roland Barthes, introduction to: Jealousy / In the Labyrinth.. Two Novels by Robe-Grillet, English translation
92 Armilla, subtle cities 3, in: Italo Calvino, De onzichtbare steden, Atlas, Amsterdam/Antwerpen2007 [1981], by Richard Howard, Grove Press, New York, 1994 [1965], p.25 [La Jalousie, 1957; Dans le Labyrinthe, 1959]
pp. 56-57 98 Ibidem.
93 Tamara, the cities and the signs 1, in: Italo Calvino, De onzichtbare steden, Atlas, Amsterdam/Antwerpen2007 99 Original: Italo Calvino, Sotto il sole giaguaro, Milan, Garzanti, 1986, English translation as Under the Jaguar
[1981], pp. 20-21 Sun by William Weaver, London: Vintage, 1993.
94 Ersilia, the cities and the encounters 4, in: Italo Calvino, De onzichtbare steden, Atlas, Amsterdam/ 100 As noted by Jan van Ballegooijen, student City&literature master course in Delft, 2008, in his essay
Antwerpen2007 [1981], pp. 82-83 Storytelling Surfaces, in: Havik, Van Ballegooijen et.al. (eds) Beyond the surface. Architectural reflections of body
95 Jan van Ballegooijen, Storytelling Surfaces, in: Havik, Van Ballegooijen et.al. (eds) Beyond the surface. and mind, TU Delft 2009, p. 14
Architectural reflections of body and mind, TU Delft 2009, p. 13 101 Peter Heg, Den stille pige, Rosinante, Denmark 2006, English translation by Nadia Christensen: The
96 Edward T. Hall , The Hidden Dimension, Anchor book editions, New York 1990 [1966], chapter viii The Quiet Girl, Picador, New York 2009, p.39 [read in Dutch translation Het stille meisje, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam
language of space, p.91-101, quote p.100 2006, p. 47]

description ~ Urban Literacy


This fragment hints at the unique sounds each city bears. In this case, it is interesting how the
writer uses sound to give clues about the whereabouts of characters: sound becomes a means 2.2 reading places
to navigate through a city. German writer Patrick Sskind became legendary with his book
Das Parfum, which is centred on a perfume maker with remarkably strong but dark powers
to create irresistible perfumes.102 The power of smell in this book influences the behaviour of 2.2.1 Phenomenology of architecture
people in an entire city. On a smaller scale, smell is used in many spatial descriptions in lit-
erature to strengthen atmospheric descriptions humid smells generating suspense or warm
smells of kitchens evoking feelings of homecoming or to cause protagonists to reflect on The theme of perception has figured in debates on architecture since the 1950s, as a criti-
memories. Taste can have a similar effect of bringing back memories, as is famously demon- cism of the abstract character of modern architecture. In his book Architecture and the Crisis of
strated in the four-page long fragment in Prousts A la recherche du temps perdu, when the small Modern Science, Mexican architect and writer Alberto Perz-Gmez complains that modern
Madeleine cake offered at tea suddenly takes the protagonist Marcel back to the village of his architecture has come adrift from the physical reality of human perceptions.104 He urges that
youth: more attention be paid to the poetic and perceptual aspects of architecture. He complains
And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised that modern architecture has moved away from the physical reality of human experi-
to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm ence. This position, which seeks to renew the connection between architecture and sensory
liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent perception, can indeed be seen as an attempt to provide alternatives to the scientific ap-
upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, proach that had become dominant in modern architectural thought. Likewise, Norwegian
something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had architect and author Christian Norberg-Schulz endeavoured to re-establish the relation-
become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory this new sensation having had ship between man and place, and explicitly focuses on the human rootedness in place. In
on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me his book Genius Loci of 1979, Norberg-Schulz speaks of a crisis in architecture, as a result of
it was me. . . . what he calls a loss of place in architectural practice: The concrete qualitative nature of
And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime- places is ignored.105 He claims that with the arrival of the Modern Movement, the awareness
blossom which my aunt used to give me . . . immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her of place has diminished. Though pioneers of this movement such as Le Corbusier, Frank
54 room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe may have addressed the importance of the 55
been built out behind it for my parents . . . and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all environment for meaningful dwelling, Norberg-Schulzs critique is that the generations
weathers, the square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, after them merely followed the formal aspects of their architecture, reducing it to a style
the country roads we took when it was fine . . .103 without its original content. According to Norberg-Schulz, architects were no longer aware
of the specific character and requirements of places, of the site-specific qualities of light
Here, it is one particular taste that generates associations of spatial settings: the old grey house, and of scale: Most buildings exist in a nowhere; they are not related to landscape nor to a
her room, a little pavilion, the town and its streets and square. The specific character of these coherent, urban whole. The modern city is based on a confusion of scales.106 Embroider-
spaces is evoked by the taste, even if the madeleine cake has no direct relation to space. ing on Heideggers ideas about the connection between dwelling and being,107 Norberg-Schulz
The above-mentioned examples show that in literature, evocative descriptions of space are considered the direct living environment of people a basic notion in architecture, the main
characterized by the attention given to detail, materiality and sensory perception. Drawing goal of which would be to create an existential foothold. As dwelling is always connected
a parallel from such literary descriptions to architecture, we can begin to see the potential of to a location, place is an essential part of lived experience. And architecture, according to
description as an instrument, allowing observation, or close reading, of lived experience and Norberg-Schulz, is an important means with which to create meaningful places. Norberg-
sensory perception to play a role not only in describing urban and architectural spaces, but Schulz connects Heideggers thoughts on being-in-the-world to the idea of place as a bear-
also in designing them. In the following paragraphs, the notions of sensory perception, lived
experience and the poetics of space will be further discussed and related to theoretical sources 104 Alberto Prez-Gmez, Introduction to Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, in: K. Michael Hays,
regarding the lived experience of architecture. Architecture Theory since 1968. New York 1998, pp. 462-475.
105 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Towards a phenomenology of Architecture, Academy Editions,
102 Patrick Sskind, Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mrders, Diogenes,1985; English translation Perfume: Story of London, 1979, chaptervii Place Today
a Murderder, Penguin Books, London 2007 106 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Towards a phenomenology of Architecture, Academy Editions,
103 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Gallimard, Paris 1919, [Dutch translation Op zoek naar de London, 1979, chapter vii Place Today
verloren tijd, deel 1 De kant van Swann, De Bezige Bij , Amsterdam 2002, p.88-91; fragment from the English 107 The old-German word Buan denotes both being and dwelling, notes Heidegger: Martin Heidegger,
edition: English translation by C.K.Scott Moncrieff, Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Wordsworth Building, Dwelling, Thinking,originally published as Bauen, Wohnen, Denken in 1951, in Neil Leach (ed.),
Editions, 2006, pp. 48-51] Rethinking Architecture. A reader in cultural theory. Routledge, London/New York, 2003 [1997]

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er of identity. As Heidegger suggests, one can only exist if one is placed: to be is to be there, shows that the perception of a city is determined by a combination of physical and sym-
(Da-sein) in an embodied condition. Edward Casey, the contemporary philosopher of place bolic elements, and that people create mental maps based on these elements that enable
agrees that: To be at all to exist in any way is to be somewhere, and to be somewhere is them to use their city.112 Gordon Cullen depicts the experience of townscapes in sequences
to be in some kind of place. . . . Nothing we do is unplaced. Casey explains how this under- of sketches, showing the visual perception of the pedestrian when strolling through the com-
standing of being placed even dates back to Aristotle, as Heidegger, for example, contends plexity of urban spaces.113 In 1959, Danish writer Steen Eiler Rasmussen focused explicitly
with Aristotle as to what being in a place signifies for being-in-the-world.108 on the theme of sensory perception in his book Experiencing Architecture.114 He discussed, for
example, the different sounds that characterize the identity of public spaces, made up by the
The philosophical approach that phenomenology takes offers a possibility to address the im- sounds of footsteps on the street and the sounds of voices and activities. In the 1960s, Edward
portance of place-making as an existential task of architecture. In short, phenomenology is Hall studied the perception of social and personal space in various cultures in relation to the
concerned with the question of how things appear to us:109 it aims to understand lived experi- senses: he speaks of visual, auditory and olfactory space, next to thermal and tactile space,
ence and the relationship of man, body and world. The discourse on phenomenology finds its which are not so much seen, heard or smelled, but perceived with the skin.115 In the essay
source in Edmund Husserls search for a philosophy concerned with perception of the world; The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa continued this line of thought, focusing especially on
he claimed that a scientific approach alone could not adequately question the real, and that the possibilities of such a perceptual approach for architecture, stating that every touching
another approach was necessary. Husserl regarded phenomenology as a descriptive philo- experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of matter, space and scale are measured
sophical approach, concerned with describing how things appear to human consciousness.110 equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, skeleton and muscle.116
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty elaborated this view with his interest in space
and its relation to the human body. His seminal work The Phenomenology of Perception, which After sight, sound is probably the most general (as opposed to intimate, personal) sense to
discusses at length the role of the body in the perception of space, has become a key source relate to architectural perception. In contemporary society, the role of sound in experiencing
for architects and theorists concerned with the experience of space. Drawing on earlier inves- space may have lost some of its strength due to the abundance of visual stimuli in adver-
tigations by philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger about the relation tisements, screens and other devices in our image-oriented cities. Even though such visual
between human, world and experience, Merleau-Pontys work gives a detailed account of em- stimuli are often combined with sound, in general these are dominated by the image. Sound
bodied experience, addressing such issues as the spatiality of ones body and the role of the as a factor in the experience of architecture has therefore been overshadowed by the he-
56 senses in perception. gemony of the visual. Indeed, architecture students get to know architectural projects mostly 57
through images: in books, magazines, films and on lecture slides. However, sound remains
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty fundamentally addresses sensory experience, an important factor in the experience of architecture. Architectural spaces are for a large part
explaining how perception depends on an intertwining of the various senses. In architec- characterized by the way the materials they consist of reflect or absorb sound, as well as by the
ture, the way in which individuals perceive their spatial surroundings through the senses, dimensions that define the distances though which sounds reflect and reverberate. The sound
the acoustic and tactile experience of materials, forms and spaces, does indeed play a crucial of footsteps in a large, stony building such as a church is different than that in an airport,
role. Key architectural notions such as distance, character and intimacy are measured not just even if the size is large as well. In the airport, sounds become diffuse because of the openness
with the eyes, but also with the entire body.111 Especially since the 1960s, numerous authors of space and the sequence of interconnected halls and corridors, while the ceiling and walls
have addressed the theme of architectural perception. Kevin Lynch and Gordon Cullen have of the church are acoustically much more defined. Visually impaired people often navigate
greatly contributed to a better understanding of how visual perception relates to the way through the city through sound. The presence of a railroad or busy street, the whistling sound
people move and orient themselves in urban environments. Kevin Lynchs book The Image of leaves in trees, or the sounds of stronger winds close to high-rise buildings provide informa-
of the City approaches perception from the vantage point of environmental psychology. He tion about the location in the city, and help to find points of orientation. Cognitive mapping,
as discussed by Kevin Lynch, can therefore reach much further than the image alone sounds
108 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History, University of California Press, Berkeley / Los
Angeles / London, 1998 [1997], p.ix, original italics of the city also take part in our mental maps. Recently, the city of Tallinn was the scene of
109 In ancient Greek, (phainomai) is the verb for to appear. A phenomenon, then, is that which the festival Tuned City, in which sonic landmarks guided the pedestrian through the city
appears to us.
110 Husserl stated I attempt to guide, not to instruct, but merely to show and to describe what I see as quoted 112 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1960
in Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, a historical introduction, Kluwen Academic Publishers, 113 Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape, The Architectural Press, Oxford, 1996 [1971]
Dordrecht 1994, p. 69 114 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture. London 1959; reprint MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1993;
111 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, New York 2005 [Phnomnologie de la Dutch edition: Architectuur beleven. Staatsuitgeverij, Den Haag 1983.
perception. Gallimard, Paris 1945]. See also the introduction to the chapter Perception in: Tom Avermaete, 115 Edward T. Hall , The Hidden Dimension, Anchor book editions, New York 1990 [1966]
Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.), Architectural Positions. Architecture, modernity and the Public Sphere, Sun 116 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses, Polemics series, Academy Editions,
Publishers, Nijmegen, 2009, p. 113-117 London 1996, p.28

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of Tallinn.117 Through such art manifestations in which the relationship between space and affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal worlds.122
sound are explored, the theme of hearing architecture is gaining attention.118 Also through Architecture, then, has the capacity to be both an object of recollection and a generator of a
publications on spatial acoustics and aural architecture, sound has reappeared in the debate sociations through its very sensory perception.
on architecture by a number of architects, sound engineers and musicologists who investi-
gate aural architecture, stating that it is not sound itself that has disappeared from space, but For Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, this aspect of sensory perception plays a major role as his
rather humans awareness of it.119 frame of reference, and as a core theme in his design practice. Describing boyhood memories
Smells and flavours may not seem such evident generators of architectural perception, but of the specific materials, colours and odours of his aunts kitchen, Zumthor says: Memories
they play an important role in the experience of spaces. Many places and cities bear their like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I know. They are reservoirs of the
own, characteristic smell. Thinking of the three largest Dutch cities, an olfactory distinction architectural atmospheres which I explore in my work as an architect.123 His approach to
can easily be made: Rotterdam smells the most urban, of stone and dust and smoke from the architecture transcends the mere visual, and addresses the acoustic and tactile experience of
harbour; Amsterdam, built on poles in the mud of the IJ water area, smells darker, around the materials, forms and spaces. In Zumthors bathhouse in Vals, the sense of touch is ultimately
canals one recognizes the humid smell of still water and brick buildings; in The Hague, the evoked by the combinations of the surface of the water and the stone materialization of the
wind brings the salty smell of the sea, which intermingles with the smell of the linden trees walls enclosing the basins. His Bruder Claus chapel is first and foremost characterized by
in the many parks and public spaces and the stony smell of small streets.120 Cities, landscapes its strong smell, which is caused by the very process of the making of this building. For this
and sites bear their own smells, whereas building materials and the interplay of light, ma- chapel, Zumthor first built a tipishaped structure of rough wooden trunks. Afterwards,
terials and scale define olfactory characteristics as well: the stony, cold smell of cathedrals is layers of concrete were added as an outer skin. After the concrete had dried out, the wooden
fundamentally different than the smell of office buildings. Smells and flavours are strongly inner structure was set on fire, leaving behind not only an extraordinary relief of charcoal in
connected to memory. People who claim to have no memories of their early childhood envi- the inner walls, but also a strong scent of burnt wood, evoking an intense, maybe even sacral,
ronment, first recognize the smell when they return to that place after many years. Somehow, experience. Elaborating on such memories of how details and materials evoke poetic experi-
the body remembers smells and flavours of the infant years that the mind has long forgot- ence, Zumthor uses architectural elements to provide intimacy and warmth in his designs,
ten. As Juhani Pallasmaa says: A particular smell makes us re-enter a space that has been by subtly establishing a field of tension between opposites such as intimacy and distance, and
completely erased from the retina memory; the nostrils awake a forgotten image, and we are interior and exterior:
58 enticed to enter a vivid daydream. The nose makes the eye remember.121 A familiar smell may These thresholds, crossings, this tiny loop-hole door, the almost imperceptible transition 59
indeed suddenly evoke a picture in our mind of a long forgotten place. Sensory perceptions of between the inside and the outside, an incredible sense of place, an unbelievable feeling of
places can thus generate associations with the past of the observer. Bloomer and Moore argue concentration when we suddenly become aware of being enclosed, of something enveloping
that the memory of architecture is strongly linked to embodied experience: to at least some us, keeping us together, holding us.124
extent every place can be remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has
This something that Zumthor describes, embracing the visitor, is the architecture itself,
which changes, as it were, from a passive object to an active subject. This interplay between
117 Tuned City took place in Tallinn in May 2010, while a second edition will be held in 2011 in the context
of Tallinns status as European Culture Capital in 2011. The first Tuned City event was held in Berlin, July 2008. subject and object is an important aspect of lived experience, which has been conceptual-
Since then Tuned City , a group of sound artists, sound engineers and musicologists functions as an interna- ized by Merleau-Ponty in the notions intertwining and chiasm.125 Both intertwining, the idea of
tional platform which proposes an examination of the relations between architecture and sound. See http:// weaving together, and chiasm, the idea of a crossing, refer to the dynamic interplay between
www.tunedcity.net, accessed January 10, 2011 the perceiving subject and the perceived object. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Pon-
118 Recently, the Netherlands Architecture Institute NAi in Maastricht organised the symposium An Inquiry ty describes how the body is at once a thing amongst things, thus an object that can be
into the Spatial, the Sonic and the Public. A report of this symposium appeared on the Dutch architecture
perceived, as well as that what sees them and touches them, in other words the perceiving
website http://www.archined.nl/nieuws/2011/engels/sound-and-space/, accessed January 10, 2011
119 Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter, for example, investigate the dimensions and functions of aural
spatiality. Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture. 122 Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, Body, Memory and Architecture, Yale University Press. New Haven,
Cambridge, MA 2007; see also Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter, Aural Architecture: The Invisible Conn. and London 1977, p. 107
Experience of Space , and other contributions in the theme issue of OASE: Pnina Avidar, Raviv Granchrow, 123 Peter Zumthor, A Way of Looking at Things, in: Architecture and Urbanism (Tokyo), February 1998 (special
Julia Kursell (eds.), OASE #78 IMMERSED. Sound and Architecture. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2009, pp.50-63 issue), p. 6. See also the introduction to the chapter Perception, in Architectural Positions. Architecture, Modernity
120 Architecture & product design studio qenep in The Hague developed a perfume based on these scents for and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.), Sun Publishers, Nijmegen, 2009, p.
the exhibition Wreldstad aan Zee. Structuurvisie Den Haag 2020, commissioned by the city planning department, 114
City Hall, The Hague, 2006 124 Ibidem.
121 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses, Polemics series, Academy Editions, 125 Chiasm/Intertwining is the title of the chapter in Merleau-Pontys The Visible and The Invisible,
London 1996, p. 38 Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1968

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subject. The body, then unites these two properties within itself, and its double belongingness ture can make place explicit: The built environment, like language, has the power to define
to the order of the object and the order of the subject reveals to us quite unexpected relations and refine sensibility. It can sharpen and enlarge consciousness. Without architecture, feel-
between the two orders.126 For Merleau-Ponty, the body is thus not a passive object, nor only ings of space must remain diffuse and fleeting.132
a perceiving subject. Rather, embodied perception implies that the body is simultaneously
subject and object, it actively perceives and it is perceived by others, or even itself. The term As is argued by the voices above, the complexity of human experience of the built environ-
atmosphere describes very well the intense relations between subject and object in regard ment should be a main concern for professionals engaged in spatial design. However, the
to the experience of place. As Gernot Bhme argues: Atmospheres are in fact characteristic complexity of such experience is seldom fully taken into account in designs by architects,
manifestations of the co-presence of subject and object.127 Indeed, atmosphere is experienced who are often taught to think in conceptual models. When spatial design is limited to mere
personally, but it is produced by means of an objective arrangement of materials, spatial conceptual reflection or abstraction, it risks failing to address the richness and complexity
dimensions, light, sound and smell all play a part in the construction of atmosphere. For of human experience of space. 133 Like in literature, spatial experience in reality is character-
architects, this notion is of interest, since it is through architecture that such an arrangement ized by both individual experience and a collective consciousness, by the actual physical en-
can be produced. When Bhme suggests that an aesthetics of atmosphere must . . . mediate counter and the memories, associations and thoughts that this encounter generates. In other
between the aesthetics of reception and the aesthetics of production,128 this implies that ar- words, our account of space continuously moves between different dimensions: a physical
chitects have to bear in mind the way their spatial and material arrangements are received. one, an abstract, conceptual one, and a more hidden dimension which is related precisely to
these memories, associations and thoughts those aspects that are difficult to measure and to
generalize. Therefore, we should search for ways to think about, and to address in design, the
complexity of architectural experience, and specifically the way space is experienced, remem-
2.2.2 Lived experience of place bered and lived by people.

By introducing the notion of lived space next to those of conceived and perceived space, in his
A number of authors in the field of geography and philosophy such as, among others, Yi-Fu theory about social space, French theorist Henri Lefebvre provided a valuable theoretical
Tuan, David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer, have continued to explore this phenomenologi- model. While professional disciplines engaged with spatial design often use a highly abstract,
60 cal approach to architecture and the experience of place. 129 Robert Mugerauer connects phe- conceptual understanding of space, named conceived space by Lefebvre, he states that space 61
nomenological thought to the design of the built environment, discussing both the idea of is also physically perceived: the space has a physical dimension, which can be touched, seen,
inhabiting place in a Heideggerian sense, and the critical displacements proposed by decon- heard and even smelled. The third way of understanding space that Lefebvre discusses is to
structivist thought, specifically by Derrida. For Mugerauer, the relation between self-identity study spaces as they are lived, in other words, to question what role spaces play in the lives of
and genius loci130 is crucial in thinking about design. Though to some extent, he claims, place their users and inhabitants, how space features in their thoughts, minds and memories. The
is already given, Mugerauer sees a task for architecture to explore this relationship between users space is lived not represented (or conceived). When compared with the conceptual
humans and place, as urban and regional planning, design, and architecture . . . help es- space of the experts (architects, urbanists, planners), the space of the everyday activities of
tablish and maintain the openings in which a new gathering together can occur and a new users is a concrete one, which is to say, subjective.134 It is this aspect of space that Lefebvre
belonging of society, self, nature.131 David Seamon reflects on behavioural aspects of place, by claims is underestimated by planners in the production of space: conceived space is the
looking, for example, at social practices in urban environments. Yi-Fu Tuan questions what dominant space in any society (or mode of production). . . . [lived space] is the dominated . .
could be the role of architecture in making meaningful places, and concludes that architec- . space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. 135 In Lefebvres view, social
space is a complex, relational space, in which the three before mentioned notions are seen
126 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1968, p. 137
as interconnected realms. Conceived, perceived and lived exist in what he calls a dialectical
127 Gernot Bhme, Atmosphere as an Aesthetic Concept, in Constructing Atmospheres, Daidalos 68/
1998, p. 114
128 Ibidem, p. 112 132 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and place the perspective of experience, University of Minnesota press, Minneapolis 1977,
129 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, the Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press, 2001 [1977]; David p. 15, p. 107
Seamon and Robert Mugeraurer (eds), Dwelling, Place and Environment :towards a phenomenology of person and 133 As the OASE editors argued in their issue on phenomenology: ...if architecture bases itself on such a
world, University of Michigan/Nijhoff 1985; David Seamon, Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing. Toward a Phe- limited experience, this will lead to spatial environments incapable ... of offering human life a place worthy
nomenological Ecology, SUNY Press, New York, 1993; Robert Mugerauer, Interpretations on Behalf of Place, State of its depth. Marc Glaudemans, Editorial. The visible and the Invisible, OASE #58, The Visible and the Invisible,
University of New York Press, New York 1994 SUN publishers, Nijmegen, 2002, p. 7
130 Robert Mugerauer, Interpretations on Behalf of Place, State University of New York Press, New York 134 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production despace,
1994, p.162 Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974], p. 362
131 Ibidem, p.163 135 Ibidem, pp. 38-39

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relationship: the three notions are interconnected, and all three are important if we want to engage lived space in architectural research and design. If writing can indeed be an opera-
understand the richness and complexity of space. However, unlike conceived and perceived tional concept in topo-analysis, through evocative description it can be extended from analys-
space, which can be measured or drawn, lived space is less easy to define. Lefebvre claims that ing place to the making of place: to the very practice of architecture.
it is difficult to theorize such lived experience: indeed, once theorized, it is no longer directly
lived. In lived space, the blurring boundaries between the subjective and the objective, the Rather than relying on objective measurements and facts, literary description allows us to
individual and the collective, the reality of physical experience and the fiction of imagination express the connection between people and the world they live in. As Yi-Fu Tuan puts it:
and memory, make it extremely difficult to measure and theorize. In that respect, Finnish A geographer speaks as though his knowledge of space and place were derived exclusively
architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa might be right when he states in his essay Lived Space from books, maps, aerial photographs and structured field surveys. . . . He and the architect-
that, measured by the criteria of Western empirical science, lived space can be seen as funda- planner tend to assume familiarity the fact that we are oriented in space and at home in
mentally unscientific.136 Still, it is necessary to develop appropriate ways to understand what place rather than describe and try to understand what being-in-the-world is truly like.142
lived space means to make this aspect of space operational in architectural and urban practice
precisely because lived space is, as Pallasmaa argues, both the object and the context of the Indeed, by means of close observation and description one can come close to understanding
making of art as well as architecture.137 what lived experience might entail. Lefebvre states that lived space is the space of inhabit-
ants and users, but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and phi-
In these writings, to a large extent informed by phenomenological thought, the question of losophers, who describe . . .143 Also Merleau-Ponty Merleau-Ponty speaks of a demand for a
the identity of place is often mentioned. An interesting approach to address this topic has pure description.144 He suggests that the real should be described, not analysed or explained.145
been formulated as topo-analysis. Gaston Bachelard introduces the term as a field of re- He writes that phenomenology offers an account of space, time and the world as we live
search, connecting the poetic imagination to the physical reality of place. He describes topo- them. It tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is . . . 146 In his phenomeno-
analysis as the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives.138 Philoso- logical method, describing is a first and important step towards the understanding of the rela-
pher Edward S. Casey argues, that: Less a method than an attitude, topo-analysis focuses on tion between man, body and world. A description, that is, of the way things appear to us, of
the placial properties of certain images.139Interestingly, the notion of topo-analysis does not the embodied experience itself. Description, then, becomes a means for architects to reach
explicitly refer to one single discipline. On the contrary: it connects to philosophy and geogra- a sensitivity towards perceptual aspects of their work they could make use of descriptive
62 phy, as well as to the design disciplines and literature. Finnish geographer Paivi Kymlainen methods to evoke sensory experiences, memories, associations and suspense. In that sense, 63
distinguishes three overlapping directions of topo-analysis, which she calls geographies in architects can learn from the capacity of literary writers to observe and evocatively describe
writing. The first is a realistic approach, which collects knowledge about places by locat- places. In her autobiography, the grand dame of Dutch literature Hella S. Haasse writes how
ing, describing, observing, measuring, evidencing, perceiving, or representing.140 The second she is driven to observe this lived experience of the world, looking at people, at their practices,
approach is about ordering places by categorizing and finding hierarchies, differences and emphatically imagining their stories:
oppositions. The third approach is defined by Kymalainen as a humanistic effort to create To be possessed by a never ending astonishment about the world, as things are, by curiosity about the
places of the human beings. In humanistic geography, place is most of all experienced and being of people, about the background of their thoughts, the motives of their acts.
sensed by the signifying subject.141 The three approaches to writing place can be interpreted For me, perception is as much an urge as the desire to describe. To walk the street, to sit in a tram or
as operational writing practices connected to Lefebvres three notions of space: the perceived train, to enter a department store, or a cafeteria or a cinema, and to look at the others with never fading
space Kymlinens realistic approach; conceived space the more conceptual way of order- attention, listen to their conversations, memorize their looks and their behaviour. The people are both
ing and categorizing; and lived space focusing on the experience of the signifying subject. more common and more peculiar than they seem at first sight. Always a new, unique self, an irreplace-
All three approaches to writing place are of interest if we intend to use writing as a tool to able individual, centre of a world-view that might at some places coincide with mine, but that, as a
whole, will forever remain unrecognizable for me. The miracle of this world, simultaneously being split
136 Juhani Pallasmaa, Lived Space. Embodied Experience and Sensory Thought, in: Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter
MacKeith (editor) Encounters. Architectural Essays, Rakennustietot Oy, Helsinki, 2005, p. 129 a million times and being a whole, takes my breath away.147
137 Juhani Pallasmaa, Embodied experience and sensory thought, in: Oase #58 The Visible and the Invisible, SUN
publishers, Nijmegen, 2002, p.19 142 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 1977, p.200
138 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace, 143 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production despace,
Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] p. 8 Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974], p. 39, original italics
139 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place a philosophical history, University of California Press, Berkeley 144 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, New York, 2005 [1945], p x(introduction)
1997, p. 288 145 Ibidem, p ix (introduction)
140 Pivi Kymlinen, Geographies in Writing. Re-imagining Place, Nordia Geographical Publications, Oulu, 146 Ibidem, p vii (introduction)
2005, p. 183 147 Hella S. Haasse, Het dieptelood van de herinnering, Querido, Amsterdam, 2004 [2003/1954 Zelfportret als
141 Ibidem, p.184 legkaart], p. 68 , translation KMH. This autobiography has not yet been published English.

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Two themes that Haasse mentions in this fragment are of great importance for those who 2.2.3 Poetic receptivity
study lived experience: the interest in human perception and the tension between collective-
ness and individuality of lived experience. Haasses attentiveness to the world around her can
be understood as a phenomenological approach. In this context, the work of Marcel Proust Indeed, Merleau-Pontys demand for a pure description can be seen as an imperative to look
is also particularly interesting. The earlier mentioned fragment indeed accurately expressed at the world with such attentiveness and wonder, which allows the writer to see the world
the connection between taste (the madeleine cake) and the memory of childhood spaces and without prejudice, before reflection. Children, not yet as much influenced by intellectual re-
places. Also in a wider sense, Prousts literary descriptions incorporate a number of phenom- flection as adults, have this ability to immediatly experience, as do writers and poets. Human
enological notions, such as sense, sensation, essence and transcendence. For phenomenolo- geographer Yi-Fu Tuan explicitly mentions the fact that most adults have lost the capacity
gists, Proust must have been an ideal writer, making much use of sensory perception in his to recapture the mood of their own childhood world. Tuan suggests that poets sometimes
descriptions and often relating such sensory experience to memory. Like Hella Haasse in the manage to capture moments of such innocence and openness of experience: Their words
fragment above, Prousts character Marcel also reflects upon the urge to perceive. The protago- recall for us a lost innocence and lost dread, an immediacy of experience that had not yet
nist Marcel, in this fragment still a young boy hoping to someday become a famous writer, suffered (or benefited) from the distancing of reflective thought. 150 The ability of poets to
gets caught by his perceptions: perceive before reflection should therefore not at all be understood as a lack of intellect. On
Then, quite apart from all these literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything, the contrary, the capacity to see even already known things as if anew, to allow for creative
suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, association and to make these associations operational in artistic work should not be under-
to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be conceal- estimated. One has to know before one can allow oneself to forget knowledge, one has to be
ing, beneath what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from them, mature to allow oneself to use the gaze of the child. As Gaston Bachelard states, knowing
but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the mysterious object was to must . . . be accompanied by an equal capacity to forget knowing. Not-knowing is not a form
be found in them, I would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavouring to of ignorance but a difficult transcendence of knowledge.151 Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa
penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. (or rather his heteronym Alberto Caeiro152) explained:
And if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to recover
64 my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate on recalling exactly the line of the roof, the It is essential to know how to see 65
colour of the stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be To know how to see without thinking
teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were themselves no more than To know how to see when one sees
the outer coverings. 148 And not to think when one sees
Nor to see when one thinks
Remarkably, Merleau-Ponty refers to Proust and a number of other writers and painters in the But that (poor us, who dress our soul in clothes!),
preface of Phenomenology of Perception, stating that phenomenology is as painstaking as the That requires a deep study
works of Balzac, Proust, Valry and Czanne by reason of the same kind of attentiveness and Requires a learning to unlearn 153
wonder, the same demand for awareness, the same will to seize the meaning of the world or
of history as that meaning come into being.149 It is indeed possible to draw a parallel between
the observational qualities of the artistic disciplines and the phenomenological attitude to be
attentive towards the smallest details of our experience. In the next paragraphs I will specify 150 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place the perspective of experience, University of Minnesota press, Minneapolis 1977, p.20
151 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston Mass 1994 p. xxxiii, referring to Jean Lescure,
this kind of attentiveness and wonder in the evocative spatial descriptions of poets.
Lapique [La potique despace, Paris 1958]
152 Fernando Pessoa developed a fascinating form of authorship, by writing from different inner characters,
the most important of which were Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Alvaro de Campos. Pessoa called Caeiro
the master of all his heteronyms (including Pessoa himself ). Although Caeiros poetry was less intellectual
and less lyrical than the work of Pessoas other heteronyms, Caeiro, conceived by Pessoa as a pagan farmers
148 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Gallimard, Paris 1919, [Dutch translation Op zoek naar de son, had the purest, most phenomenological gaze. Much has been written about Pessoas heteronyms, my
verloren tijd, deel 1 De kant van Swann, De Bezige Bij , Amsterdam 2002, p. 213 English translation by C.K.Scott main source has been August Willemses extensive reflection Fernando Pessoa, waarheid veinzen om niet niets
Moncrieff, Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Wordsworth Editions, 2006 p.182 te zijn in: August Willemse, Fernando Pessoa, gedichten, De Arbeiderspers Amsterdam/Antwerpen 2001 [1978],
149 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, New York, 2005, p. xxiv (preface). Certainly, pp.221-254
many other writers and artists could have been mentioned here. The choice of these French examples most 153 Fernando Pessoa, From the Portuguese-Dutch collection: August Willemse, Fernando Pessoa, gedichten,
likely results from the predominantly French cultural environment of Merleau-Ponty. De Arbeiderspers Amsterdam/Antwerpen 2001 [1978], pp. 94-95, translation KMH

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This capacity of the poet to observe everything as if anew, with attentiveness and wonder, can such a receptivity, which allows the poet to discover unexpected connections:
indeed be seen as the precondition for a phenomenological approach. In this way, Merleau- Like receiving an answer to an un-posed question, like experiencing a connection of which
Pontys notion of pure description, without the interference of intellectual reflection, can be you were not yet aware that you knew it existed and not only that. It is like, at the same time,
understood as an encouragement to re-learn to see the world without prejudice. In The Poetics reality could unveil more of its secrets, as if it has new connections already there for you.158
of Space, Gaston Bachelard argues that phenomenology is the only academic area that can
address the complexity of the poetic imagination, that is a study of the phenomenon of the In his view, receptivity is a precondition for invention, which is true for the poet as well as
poetic image when it emerges in the consciousness as a direct product of the heart, soul and for the scientist: This is what the scientist and the poet share, this ability to have an aesthetic
being of man, apprehended in his actuality.154 Echoing the words of Dutch phenomenologist experience, when the I disappears for a moment in favor of the it. 159 Such receptivity co-
J.H. van den Berg, Bachelard states that: poets are born phenomenologists, noting that things incides with the before mentioned phenomenological approach of observing without preju-
speak to them.155 Indeed, like Marcel Prousts character Marcel in Remembrance of Things Past, dice, of noting how things speak.
poets have the phenomenological urge to search for the essence within the image, within the
smell, within sensory perception. Fernando Pessoa clearly demonstrates such a phenomeno- After the problem of receiving the poetic image, which requires a certain openness, the next
logical gaze, stressing the importance of embodied experience: question is how the other, the reader, can understand the poetic description of such an im-
mediate experience. As Bachelard wonders: How can this singular, short-issued event consti-
. . . I think with my eyes and ears tuted by the appearance of an unusual poetic image, react on other minds and other hearts,
and with my hands and feet despite all barriers of common sense, all the disciplinated schools of thought, content in
and with my nose and mouth their immobility?160 Each reader of poetry is familiar with the awkward experience of
recognizing fragments of poems, as if they were written especially for that unique reader.
To think a flower is to see it and smell it Somehow, the poem, written by someone living a different life, in a different place and time, seems
And to eat a fruit is to taste its meaning.156 to express precisely the state of mind of the reader. In this context, Bachelard speaks of
reverberation:
Poetry, though addressing existential themes of life, often starts from the simplest daily ob- In the resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own. The rever-
66 servations. Colours, smells, shapes, weather conditions, light and shadow trigger associations berations bring about a change of being. It is as though the poets being were our own being . . . 67
with the complexity of human emotions. According to South American writer Jorge Luis The image offered us by reading the poem now really becomes our own. It takes root in us. It
Borges, poetry can hide everywhere: . . . and life is, I am sure, made of poetry. Poetry is not has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created
alien, poetry is lurking around the corner. It may spring on us at any moment.157 Indeed, it, that we should have created it.161
many seemingly meaningless details, often connected to buildings and places, may generate
associations of great emotional importance. The question is, then, how to recognize such ob- This recognition is of a phenomenological nature, explains Bachelard. The poets description
servations and connected associations as meaningful, and how to find the words expressing is so vivid that it immediately causes an image to form in the readers mind: an image, that is,
such meaningful connections. To be able to experience such poetic moments, as Bachelard before reflection. Only after this first instant, this poetic image then connects to individual ex-
calls them, one should develop a kind of receptivity. Dutch poet Rutger Kopland called for periences and memories of the reader; it resonates, as it were, in the life of the reader. In their
work, poets can thus formulate a spatial experience that is on the one hand highly individual,
154 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace, while on the other, through reverberation, it obtains collective meaning. In other words, the
Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] pp. xviii subjective experience of the individual can be understood by others and also have meaning
155 The Dutch psychologist J.H. van den Berg introduced a phenomenological approach in Dutch psychology,
for others. As Yi-Fu Tuan puts it: . . . even an experience that appears to be the product of
addressing the way people perceive their spatial environment. An interesting introduction to his views on
distance, verticality and other spatial notions is J.H van den Berg, De Dingen. 4 metabletische overpeinzingen, unique circumstances can be shared.162 The possibility to pass on individual experiences to
Callenbach, Nijkerk 1966 (in Dutch). His work has been published in English by Springfield publishers,
Illinois in 1955. Bachelard quotes his remark that poets are born phenomenologists, in: Gaston Bachelard, 158 Rutger Kopland, Het mechaniek van de ontroering, Van Oorschot publishers, Amsterdam 1995 pp. 29-30,
The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace, Presses Universitaire de original in Dutch, translation KMH
France, 1964] pp. xxviii. 159 Rutger Kopland, ibid.
156 Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), Poems of Fernando Pessoa, poem O Guardador de Rebanhos, Poemas de 160 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace,
Alberto Caeiro, vol III, Obras completas de Fernando Pessoa, Lisbon 1963, translated by Edwin Honig, Susan Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] pp. xviii-xix
M. Brown, City Lights Books, 1998 [1986] , p.17-18 161 Ibidem p. xxii-xxiii
157 Jorge Luis Borges, from the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1967-68, in: Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse, 162 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place the perspective of experience, University of Minnesota press, Minneapolis
Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 2000 1977, p. 147

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others can be called transsubjectivity.163 Through the impression of being personally involved in which the deadly silent window breathes again
with the poem, the reader in a way participates, by living the poems we read.164 with sleeping crowns in the wind167

The poetic image, states Bachelard, is unusual, yet it takes root in both writer and reader.165 It While the intimate private space is the poetic space that Bachelard mostly refers to, land-
is thus communicable. Architectural spaces can also have this quality. My first encounter with scapes and cities may also evoke such poetic images. In the work of Dutch poet Hans Lodeizen
the unusual shapes and shadows of Le Corbusiers Ronchamps evoked such a reverberation. the spaces of the city often feature, who in some poems sees
Coming from the road through the village, at the feet of the Vogezen mountains, entering the
chapel is an introduction to another world, a world of darkness, light and silence. Mysterious the city as a breathing animal
beams of light touch the rough walls and the slightly inclined floor like those in a cave. Three giving light and being dark168
towers, massive-looking from the outside, appear to be coloured niches, eating the sunlight
from the sky differently each at time of the day. The architecture is simultaneously simple and For architects and planners concerned with the city, a poetic gaze can help to understand
complex. What seems clear to us at first sight, turns out to be slightly different at the next view. the lived experience of urban places, as poetry addresses one of architectures fundamental
The South wall seems solid and load-bearing, until we discover the strip of light between wall ambiguities: the interplay between the object and the subject. The object (a place, an object,
and roof, and realize that the actual construction is built up of columns hidden in the wall. In an architectural detail) almost becomes a subject when it is able, through a smell, a sound or
the architecture of the chapel, aspects of perception coincide with functional demands and an unlikely image, to move people emotionally. As Bachelard states: At the level of the poetic
the genius loci, the identity of place. It offers a stratified spiritual landscape, from a distance image, the duality of subject and object is iridescent, shimmering, unceasingly active in its
and at a closer look, in form and material, in light and movement. The chapel is a thing that inversions.169 Developing the skill of receptivity would greatly help architects to understand
speaks to us, touching not only the physical landscape, but also the inner landscape of its visi- the relation between people and place, and to imagine how their designs will influence aspects
tor.166 Le Corbusiers chapel has the transsubjective quality of the poetic image. It takes root in of lived experience. Then, the receptivity of the poet could be a quality, which can be extended
us, and its reverberations can be found in many other architectural spaces. to urban and architectural analysis and practice. Like the reader who lives the poem he reads,
an architect could read and live the places he studies, noting how they speak, as it were. Evoca-
When it comes to describing spaces, poets have a highly developed sense for lived space. Their tive description could take place in different phases of a design project, first in the phase of
68 descriptions of architectural space are vivid and detailed, sometimes to the extent that even site analysis, or rather topo-analysis, focusing on revealing the characteristics that constitute 69
objects are allocated human characteristics: houses embrace, comfort or shiver, attics groan the very specificity of place. Then, by evocatively describing the associations, or poetic images,
and basements hide. Meticulously, Bachelard discusses such poetic images connected to the as Bachelard would say, deriving from such a reading, fragments of atmospheres can already
intimate spaces of the house. Indeed, many examples can be given of poetry featuring houses begin to emerge, and sparks of architectural details come to light. In a later stage of design,
and details of houses. The before mentioned Dutch poet Rutger Kopland usually stays close when the project as a whole reaches more clarity, it is through evocative description that its
to his home, describing the atmospheres of the rooms of his house and its near environment: perceptual qualities can be expressed whether in text or in drawing.

The night in which the things again


become shadows of themselves,
the room smells again like clean sheets,
aged wood and lavender,

167 Original in Dutch: De nacht waarop de dingen weer schaduwen/worden van zichzelf,//de kamer weer ruikt
163 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace, naar schone lakens,/oud hout en lavendel,//waarop het doodstille raam weer ademt/met slapende kruinen in de
Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] p. xix wind .Rutger Kopland, Dankzij de dingen [Thanks to things], G.A.van Oorschot, Amsterdam 2000 [1989], p. 34
164 Ibidem, p. xxvii [translation kh].
165 The interactivity between writer and reader, specifically the role of the reader as a co-producer of the text, 168 Original in Dutch:.. En zie de stad als een ademhalend dier / lichtgeven en donker zijn, Fragment of poem of
will be discussed in the chapter Transcription, part 3.1.3 Writing another version: the role of the reader. Hans Lodeizen, orginally from the collection Het innerlijk behang (1944-1948), in: Hans Lodeizen, Verzamelde
166 I originally wrote this description of Ronchamps for the educational reader: Sien van Dam, Michiel gedichten, Van Oorschot Publishers, Amsterdam 1997, p. 19 [translation kh].
Riedijk, Jaap Dawson et al. (eds). Plandocumentatie kleine publieke gebouwen, (Project documentation Small Public 169 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace,
Buildings) TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, Delft University Press 2007 Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] p. xix

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tions sets still new obligations for anchored architecture.175 However, anchoring implies more
2.3 architectural description than attaching a building to a mere site. Place has a much wider connotation than site or loca-
tion. Place entails a more experiential understanding of human environment. Philosopher
Edward S. Casey has highlighted the role of place in philosophical history, explaining how at
2.3.1 Architectural descriptions: Steven Holl some point place made way for space in Western thought, and arguing for a renewed posi-
tion of place in contemporary philosophy. In The Fate of Place Edward S. Casey explains how,
though site (or location) in itself is not necessarily embodied:
In the 1990s, architects Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Prez Gomez together The more we reflect on place . . . the more we recognize it to be something not merely char-
wrote the book Questions of Perception, in which they presented their phenomenological inspi- acterizable but actually experienced in qualitative terms. There terms, for example, color,
ration to an audience of architects.170 In the view of American architect Steven Holl, sensory texture, and depth, are known to us only in and by the body that enters and occupies a given
perception is the core of the work of an architect: place . . . there can be no being-in-place except by being in a densely qualified place in concrete
Architecture, more fully than other art forms, engages our sensory perceptions. The passage embodiment. Indeed, how can one be in place except for through ones own body?176
of time; light, shadow and transparency; color phenomena, texture, material and detail all
participate in the complex experience of architecture. . . . Only architecture can simultane- Holl follows this line of thought, and connects place to body: The body is the very essence
ously awaken all the senses all the complexities of perception.171 of our being and our spatial perceptions.177 Thus, Holls interest in place is not necessarily
based on a different theoretical discourse than his idea of intertwining. On the contrary, both
Steven Holls design approach, a hybrid mode between a conceptual framework and a phe- notions are deeply informed by phenomenological thought, in which the embodied expe-
nomenological approach,172 can be regarded as an example of what I called evocative de- rience of place is one of the central notions. In Steven Holls design approach, the analysis
scription. Following Merleau-Ponty, Holl states that: Space is only perceived when a subject of the site therefore entails much more than closely studying a map or making a survey of
describes it.173 Drawing on phenomenological themes such as bodily experience, intertwining spatial characteristics. Holl tries to understand what a place means to users and inhabitants;
and chiasmatic relations in both his written and architectural work, his buildings reveal a to trace layers of history; to find stories and studies of the past; to experience the atmosphere;
sensitivity for light, materiality, and place in an evocative way. to look at it from various perspectives using various senses. In other words: Holl starts out to
70 In his work, Steven Holl pairs his attention to questions of perception with an awareness of live place, before designing it. The actual design decisions in this process are, in some cases, 71
place. His books Intertwining and Anchoring, both reflecting on his architectural work, can be long postponed, until the place becomes lived, until the architect is so familiar with it that the
seen as the two pillars on which his approach is constructed. Anchoring, written around 1987, place becomes his own. To use a metaphor frequently brought up by Bachelard and Pallas-
was Holls maa: the architect starts to inhabit the place as much as the place lives in the body and mind
. . . first manifesto about the connection of architecture, site, phenomena, idea, history. It was of the architect. Only then do Holls powerful conceptual figures appear, showing the first but
an operational philosophy; it did not try to find recipes, but to embrace the unpredictable, in essential moves towards the anchorage of new architecture to existing, lived place. And not
the sense that we are always given a new site and situation, and we have to operate according only that, the anchoring of the design is also meant to develop a new condition, a dialogue
to the conditions there.174 between place and architecture: When an architectonic work is successfully connected to the
situation, a so called third condition will develop. This condition is joined with expression
Anchoring, as the title already suggests, discusses the intention to ground a work of architec- and idea of situation.178 This extended and delayed topo-analysis is carried out with a similar
ture to its place. Even though the work of architects today is less bound to one place or region, awareness for detail and atmosphere, as we have found in the evocative descriptions of the
and some architects, including Holl, receive commissions world-wide, Holl states that such literary writers mentioned earlier in this chapter.
anchoring is all the more important: anchoring architecture to the history of the site . . . The
challenge of extremely diverse lands, cultures, climates, and their urban or suburban condi- In his book Intertwining Steven Holl explains how material phenomena, texture, light and
shadow but also aspects of near and far are all intricately connected in an intertwining

170 Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Prez-Gomez, Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture,
A+U July 1994 (special issue) 175 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007
171 Steven Holl, in: ibidem, p. 41 [1996], p.7
172 Holl characterizes his own approach in Alejandro de Zaera-Polo, A conversation with Steven Holl , in: Steven 176 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History, University of California Press, Berkeley / Los
Holl, 1986-1996, El Croquis, Madrid, 1996, p. 11 Angeles / London, 1998 [1997], p.202, underlining kh
173 Steven Holl, Parallax, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000, p. 13. 177 Steven Holl, Parallax, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, p. 13.
174 Steven Holl, 1986-1996, El Croquis, Madrid, 1996, p.11 178 Steven Holl, Anchoring, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1989, p.9

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continuum.179 This intertwining continuum is primarily experienced by the body. From
Merleau-Ponty, we learned that the world is perceived by the whole of the body, that every
fragment of sensory perception is linked to other ones. And not only our sensory experiences
are intertwined, the same goes for the relationship between perceiving and being perceived,
between the sensible and the sentient.180 Here, again, we arrive at the literary ambivalence
between the object and the subject. The idea of intertwining can be seen as a critique on the
dualistic approach of object and subject as opposed notions: here, subject and object are seen
as reversible, connected in complex ways, both being present simultaneously, merging into
one another, like different lines of the same story. And it is here that the phenomenological
approach to architecture, as used by Steven Holl, reveals its literary dimension: for him, the
aim in architecture is for the subjective and objective to intertwine.181 Indeed, as Bachelard
1
revealed, the continuous inversions of subject and object, their unceasingly active and in-
terdependent relationship, characterize precisely the power of the poetic image.182 For Holl,
the design of architectural space, by addressing all the senses and consciously bounding to-
gether the various phenomena of perception, should result in such psychological spaces of
association; spaces, thus, which trigger the senses, allowing for associations, spaces in which
one can be both observer and participant. Steven Holl suggests that architectural space can
be a psychological space of association183 by means of subtle combinations of material, light
and details, paired with the experience of shifting perspectives when moving through, archi-
tectural space can thus invite the visitor to develop a heightened sensitivity, and be open to
memories and associations.

72 In Intertwining, Holl states that perception is metaphorical: perception of the everyday cor- 73
2a
responds to a metaphorical experiencing of the world.184 For example: . . . nights darkness
evokes a connection to Dionysian archetypes and mysteries, while the bright light of day is
Apollonian, exuberant, and unconcealed.185 This idea of metaphorical perception serves for
Holl as a means to not only recognize, but also produce a poetics of space. Therefore, in his ar-
chitectural work, Holl frequently makes use of metaphors, both as a design tool, which helps
to make design decisions, and as a recognizable element for the later perceiver of the building
an underlying storyline that generates associations by the visitor. In the 1980s project for a
house at Marthas Vineyard,186 for instance, Holl used the theme of the whale in Moby Dick, the

179 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007
[1996], p 12
180 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1968
181 ..subjective and objective must intertwine. Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton 2b
Architectural Press, New York 2007 [1996], p 11, Our aim is for an intertwining of the subjective-objective.
Ibidem, p. 16
182 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994 [La Potique de lEspace,
Presses Universitaire de France, 1964] p. xix 1 The house at Marthas Vineyard (1984-1988). The design was inspired by the metaphor of the
183 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007
beached whale of Melvilles Moby Dick
[1996], p. 13
184 Ibidem, p. 11 2a Watercolour sketch of the St Ignatius Chapel: metaphor of 7 different bottles of light in
185 Ibidem, p. 11 a stone box.
186 House at Marthas Vineyard, MA, United States, 1984-1988 2b Interior of the Chapel, the light entering from different directions, in different intensities.

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house is conceived as a whale skeleton beached on the shore. In the church of St Ignatius,187
a metaphorical image of seven coloured bottles in a massive box was used to allow for a rich
variation in the way the light could enter the sacral space. Using such metaphorical means,
Holl investigates the possibility for architecture to generate associations by simultaneously
addressing different phenomena, to elevate the experience of daily life.188

This notion of daily life is important to Steven Holl, who claims that the experience of the
everyday is more open to phenomena than the formal attitude that many architects employ.
Indeed, as Holl argues, architecture differs from the more autonomous arts by being used,
by surrounding us, by becoming part of our daily lives. In everyday life we use buildings,
rather than observing them as objects of art, we use them and are used to them in our daily
3
practice. The perception of our surroundings is therefore not always a very focused one. By
some theorists, this out of focus, or diffused perception is mentioned as an important but
often forgotten aspect of architectural experience. When discussing diffused perception of the
everyday life as the humus for a lively, motivated, energetic relation of man and his envi-
ronment, Dutch architecture theorist Ton Verstegen refers to Walter Benjamins distinction
between the tactile and optical experience of space, whereby the tactile is directly connected
to the aspect of use.189 Juhani Pallasmaa claims that unfocused vision makes us participants of
space, perspectival space and focused vision turn us into outside observers, whereas simul-
taneous, peripheral and haptic space encloses us and enfolds us in its embrace and makes us
participants.190 As Pallasmaa makes clear, a meaningful perception of space is not a singular,
merely optical one. It is the complexity of spatial experience, the overlapping of various phe-
74 nomena and perspectives, which can provide a complexity of experiences. The unfocused 75
vision, and the overlapping of phenomena and perspectives that Pallasmaa and Verstegen
refer to, can be found in the watercolours of Steven Holl. In these images, colours and spaces
overlap, the lines are often not sharp, the water suggests different shades of light. Indeed, the
watercolours capture the associations derived from the reading of place, and they are the first 4a
evocation of the atmosphere of the project. While watercolours rather than text are the ma-
terial in which Holl crafts his evocative descriptions of places and the first ideas of projects,
in many cases it is literature that inspires them. The competition entry for a museum at Ile
Seguin in Paris, for instance, was inspired by both the form and content of the nineteenth-
century poem Un coup de Ds191 (a throw of dice) by French poet Mallarm. The poem, which
addressed the issue of chance, was graphically designed in a, especially for that time, remark-
able way, leaving meaningful white spaces on the page, contributing to the rhythm of the

187 The Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seatlle, WA, United States 1994-1997
188 Ibidem, p 11.
189 Ton Verstegen, Gebaren. Atmosferische waarneming en architectuur, Art EZ Press / djonge Hond, Arnhem/
Harderwijk, 2009, p. 21-23; Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechnical Reproduction, in Illumina-
tions, Pimlico, London, 1999 [1955], p.233. 4b
190 Juhani Pallasmaa, Inhabiting Space and Time the Loss and Recovery of Public Space, in in Architectural
Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.),
Sun Publishers, Nijmegen, 2009, p. 129 3 Competition project for Ile Seguin, Paris 2001, inspired by Mallarms poem Un coup de Des.
191 Stphane Mallarm, Un coup de ds jamais nabolira le hasard, [A throw of dice will never abolish 4 a+b Knut Hamsun Center, Hamary, Norway, 2009. Museum dedicated to the Norwegian writer
chance]1897 Knut Hamsun. Conceptual sketch the building as a personality and exterior view.

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text.192 The competition entry is conceived as a throw of dice, causing an unexpected, slightly
disordered organization of spaces. Second, the pauses in the poem, represented by the white
in its graphic design, were translated to similar openness in design as a series of voids, patios
in the continuous fabric of the building.

A recent project by Steven Holl, which takes literature as its very point of departure, is the
Knut Hamsun Center in Norway, realized in 2009. The design for this museum, devoted to
the writer who depicted Oslo and the Norwegian landscape around the turn of the twentieth
century, is anchored as much in its scenic site in the far North as in the oeuvre of the writer.
Empathizing with the conflictive personality of the writer and of his characters, like the pro-
tagonist in Hunger193 who views the city from his troubled mental and physical state, the ar-
chitecture offers conflicting perceptual moods from deep dark corners, to light, open rooms
with wide and open views of the Norwegian landscape. With its uncertain posture not quite
straight, slightly unbalanced its grassy haircut and its balconies sticking out as hesitating
arms, the building can be read as a body in itself, a personality. As Juhani Pallasmaa suggests 1
in his description (evocative, indeed) of the project, the dark tower in the remote Norwegian
landscape can be seen as an architectural portrait, a description without words.194In this
project, the intertwinement of object and subject is outspoken.

2.3.2 Anchoring and intertwining:


76 77
Kiasma museum, Helsinki
Thus, Steven Holls evocative approach is grounded in two aspects of phenomenological
thought: place (anchoring) and perception (intertwining). The Kiasma museum for contem-
2
porary art in Helsinki, designed by Holl in the 1990s, illustrates both aspects of this approach.
My choice of this project by Holl as an analytical model in this chapter is based on a number
of considerations. First, it is precisely in this project that Holl unmistakably refers to phenom-
enological discourse as a source of inspiration it is even in the name of the building itself,
Kiasma, that the reference to Merleau-Ponty is made. Second, the Kiasma project is, in my view,
clearly an example of place-making. The design anchors architecture to place, and it does so
on several levels. It is possible, in this project, to reveal different qualitative layers of place, and
reflect on how a third condition has arisen from the connection between the architecture
and complex layers forming the genius loci of the site. Third, my choice of this project is also
a personal one, for I lived in Helsinki during the period of Kiasmas construction, and visited
the museum many times after it opened in 1999: sometimes for an exhibition, sometimes

192 Such graphic experiments in poetry later appeared in, for instance, the work of the Belgian poet Paul van
Ostaijen 1896-1928. An extensive collection of his work is Paul van Ostaijen, Music-Hall, Uitgeverij Ooievaar,
1 Early sketch by Steven Holl, showing the position of the museum at the hinge of various
Amsterdam, 1996
193 Knut Hamsun, Hunger, Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh 2001, [1890] urban and natural forces. Note the change in direction of the urban grid directly south of the
194 Juhani Pallasmaa, An Architectural Portrait. between the literary and embodied metaphor, in: E.F. site. Sketch 1992.
Langdalen et al, Hamsun, Holl, Hamary, Lars Mlller Publishers, Baden 2010 pp.231-245, quote page 243. 2 South faade of the Kiasma museum: the entrance, creating an accessible public urban space.

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to guide visitors interested in its architecture, sometimes just to visit the museum caf and Finland. Critics feared his statue would be overshadowed by the museum for contemporary
meet with friends. I have known the site before and after Steven Holls intervention, and have art. Meanwhile, right next to the site was one of the most interesting informal urban sites
therefore witnessed how the architecture became anchored in the identity of the place, and of Helsinki: the former railroad warehouses Makasiinit. This low ensemble of brick build-
vice-versa. This personal attachment to the project, I would like to stress, is no less relevant as ings was, in the late 1990s, the stage for Helsinkis alternative scene until a fire destroyed it
a consideration for this analysis. Here, I have myself become part of the experiment, taking recently.197 Weekly flea markets were held in the warehouses and their half-open courtyard,
the roles of both outsider and participant. The place in Helsinki, and especially the place it has parties and art exhibitions took place, as well as temporary constructions and events.
become since Holls intervention, has rooted in me, its user and perceiver, and in Bachelards Steven Holls design for the museum is carefully positioned in this field of urban forces. The
and Pallasmaas sense, I inhabit the place as much as it inhabits me. In the following para- different directions of the city structure are absorbed in the main composition of the build-
graphs, I will first discuss how the building is anchored in the complex urban site in Helsinki, ing. Steven Holl speaks of a line of culture, pointing from the city centre to Finlandia Hall
and then bring to the fore how Holl has generated perceptual qualities that undeniably cause through the Kiasma building, while a line of nature responds to the landscape and the
an intertwining of subject and object, of visitor and building. lake198. If Tl Lake was sometimes seen as a symbol for the natural character of Helsinki,
then again as the centrepiece for urban visions, the design of Kiasma responds to both in-
The site of the museum for contemporary art is the exact point in the city of Helsinki where the terpretations. Its form bends towards the lake, opening the view towards it. Meanwhile, the
urban structure seems to fall apart in fragments: south of the site are the two different grids of building manifests itself to the city as a public statement, in the line of Aaltos and Saarinens
the inner city, in the north-west begins the early twentieth century city extension Tl, and grand visions. Regarding the field of tension between institutional power and informality, the
in the north-east lies Tl Lake. The urban grid of the inner city, designed in the early nine- museum seems to welcome both sides with a certain ease.
teenth century by Johan Albert Ehrenstrm, has two distinct directions. In the south-east lies
the formal, nineteenth-century grid, with formal axes and monumental buildings, including Kiasma, in its composition and presence in the city, represents a building of national impor-
Senats white neoclassical church.195 In the south-west, the grid is turned, thereby forming tance. Seen from the city centre, the building has a certain public monumentality in the way
a number of triangular public spaces where the two directions meet, along the backbone of it arises from the junction of streets, in the way the pond on the west-side reflects the faade,
Helsinkis centre, Mannerheimintie road. The Kiasma site marks the end of this nineteenth- and in the way it offers a suitable background for the statue of Finlands former president. On
century grid, and takes up both directions, while Mannerheimintie bends slightly and contin- the other hand, the north faade, with its transparency, seems to express the more informal
78 ues its way up north. Tl Lake, just north of the Kiasma site, has in its history been the cen- atmosphere of the artists. Holl placed the building at some distance from the street, thereby 79
trepiece of many an urban scheme. In 1911, Bertel Jung proposed a central park in an English forming a public space, visible and accessible from the outside, open to all Helsinkis inhabit-
landscape style, of which Tl Lake would form the southernmost part. To a certain extent, ants. Simultaneously, this composition provided room for the statue, the faade forming a
this idea still remains visible today: the lake can be seen as the starting point of a long, natural canvas behind it. Inside the museum, the entrance hall is the place where both volumes, and
zone, a green void in the urban fabric of Helsinki. In Elil Saarinens vision for Greater Helsinki, all narratives, come together. The ramp, next to the inner wall of the curved volume, has an
Mannerheimintie became a grand axis, while the most important public buildings were situ- almost landscape-like quality, as if running in a natural curve between two mountain ridges.
ated along Tl Lake. Likewise, Alvar Aalto proposed to build a modern urban waterfront on The filtered light coming from above, strengthening this effect. Meanwhile, the entrance hall
the banks of the inner lake. The concert hall Finlandia, designed by Aalto, was realized in the is one of the most urban interiors of Helsinki. This hall, formed by the encounter of the two
late 1970s at the lakeside, but remained solitary until recently a residual of greater plans. volumes, can also be seen as the encounter between the formal and the informal. The orthog-
The current plan of Helsinkis City Planning Department is to intensify Tl Bays function onal volume receives the formal grid of the inner city, and gives way to public urban spaces
as a meeting place for the people of Helsinki. A lively, varied and functional environment, on open sides. In this way, it offers space in the south for an entrance square, marked by a long
reiterating the idea of a Central Park to continue as a green area right up to the city block canopy which offers shelter from rain and snow. On the west side, the terrace of the museum
structure of the inner city.196 The choice for the museum of contemporary at this site can be caf is situated, with a pond reflecting the statue of Mannerheim. The curved volume bends
seen as a late answer to the visions of Saarinen and Aalto. The project for the museum was also towards the lake, answering the other directions in the urban pattern with its inclination .
accompanied by a public discussion about the delicacy of the site. Within a stones throw, on While the orthogonal volume has an urban character, the curved volume responds to the
the opposite side of the street, Helsinkis Parliament building rises from the ground with its landscape. This curved volume is cut off in the north, giving way to the glass faade offering
monumental staircase and columns. On the site itself, another symbol of institutional power a view of the Finlandia Hall and Tl Lake. At precisely chosen places in the building, frag-
was present: the statue of Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, who was the first President of
197 See Kimmo Oksanen, Makasiinit 1899-2006, Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, 2006 for the history of
195 The Senats church, as well as a large number of Helsinkis monumental buildings in this area have Makasiinit, and Panu Lehtovuori, Experience and Conflict: The Production of Urban Space, Ashgate, London 2010
been designed by the German architect Carl Ludvig Engel. See for a more detailed description the Urban guide for a discussion of their role in the urban scene in Helsinki.
Helsinki, Helsinki City Planning Department, , Helsinki 2006, p.11-12. 198 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007 [1996],
196 Urban guide Helsinki, Helsinki City Planning Department, Helsinki 2006, p.187 p.88-90

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ments of the city are carefully framed. From the first-floor balcony of the central hall, a gaze
is turned backwards to the inner city, while some exhibition rooms place the Mannerheim
statue in a prominent frame. In this way, both in the composition of the site and in the interior
of the museum, Steven Holl succeeds in establishing a collaboration between the different
urban fragments of Helsinki: the directions of the grids, the natural and urban atmospheres.
Various aspects of the site have thus become part of the design. The national pride is reflected
in the way the statue and the parliament building are dealt with. The contrast between for-
mality and informality, symbolized by its neighbours, the parliament and the Makasiinit, is
reflected in the now formal, imposing spaces in the museum, like the entrance hall and some
of the large exhibition spaces, and then again the more informal moments in the composi-
tion: the freely shaped staircase, the window facing north, and the caf that presupposes an
informal relation to the public. In this way, the museum has anchored itself in the city, and
made the site a place of encounter, not only of volumes, but an encounter of conflicting urban
forces, and of inhabitants and art.
3
In 1999, the year when the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma opened its doors,
Juhani Pallasmaa wrote that lived space is the space in which the inner space of the mind and
the external space of the world fuse into each other, forming a chiasmatic bond.199 No doubt,
the mutual interest of Juhani Pallasmaa and Steven Holl in phenomenological thought is
reflected in this quote. In a close reading of the Kiasma museum, all aspects mentioned in
Steven Holls reflections about the sensory perception of space come to the fore: in the way
the light is used, captured and led inside the building; in the materiality, colour phenomena
80 and details; in the spatial organization that evokes a sense of movement as well as moments 81
of silence; in the way the building sometimes evokes an outsiders perspectives, and some-
times allows participation. Steven Holl conceived the interior of the building as a series of
spatial sequences.200 These sequences entail a rich spatial experience, which is caused by the
continuously changing encounters between the curved and the orthogonal space. Holl states:
The spaces of the intertwining curves of Kiasma avoid both the rigidity of a classical ap-
proach and the excessive complexity of expressionism. The dynamic internal circulation,
with its curving ramps and stairs, allows for an open, interactive viewing, inspiring visitors to
choose their own routes through the galleries. Unlike a hierarchically sequenced or ordered 4
movement, this open-ended, casual circulation provokes moments of pause, reflection, and
discovery.201

In that sense, the building has an almost urban quality, in the sense that it offers a diversity of
spaces: both continuous and enclosed spaces, views and shelters, direct and indirect light. If
we would take Gordon Cullens method of analysing townscapes, as mentioned before in this
chapter, and make a sketch of every new spatial frame, we would indeed find a sequence of

199 Juhani Pallasmaa, Lived Space. Embodied Experience and Sensory Thought, in: Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter
3 Northern faade of the Kiasma museum: opening the view towards Aaltos Finlandia hall and
MacKeith (editor) Encounters. Architectural Essays, Rakennustietot Oy, Helsinki, 2005, p. 129
200 Steven Holl, 1986-1996, El Croquis, Madrid, 1996, p. 146 Tl Lake, meanwhile laying bare the inside of the museums artistic content; reflecting the
201 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007 informality of the artistic scene.
[1996], p.90 4 The central hall of the Kiasma museum of contemporary art Helsinki.

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different perspectives. In his later writing, Holl calls this shifting of perspectives parallax.202
This overlap of perspective and changing atmospheres indeed stimulates an embodied expe-
rience of the building.

The architectural use of light plays an important part in this experience, as the light guides
the visitor through the sequence of rooms. Sometimes the light is soft, reaching the walls
indirectly via hidden roof lights, giving a sense of enclosure; sometimes a hint is given of a
continuity of spaces by means of light; at other times, a window brings in bright daylight,
opening the perspective to the city. The choice of materials strengthens this effect. The curved,
white-plastered walls of the exhibition spaces seem to catch the light in an atmosphere of
softness. Sandblasted glass is used to refract the light before it reaches the rooms. In addition,
5
the specifics of the site play a role in dealing with light: the northern latitude makes for a low
position of the sun and long shadows in winter, and light entering almost from the north in
summer. This extraordinary position of the sun in Helsinki is reflected in the shape of the
building and the positioning of the windows. The aspect of scale is used as a device in direct-
ing the perception of the museums visitors. Holl chose to create silence by eliminating the
intermediate scale.203 This means that most attention is paid to the large scale of the building
and its spatial sequences, and to the details of door handles, staircases and so forth, while the
intermediate scale that usually accentuates the spaces by means of skirting boards, window
frames or thresholds is left behind. Holl suggests that this neutralizes the exhibitions spaces,
limiting their architectural presence to their very shape, their white walls and their dark con-
crete floors, thereby leaving the intermediate scale to the works of art exhibited. The detailed
82 scale, then, receives more attention. Door handles, for example, are big and heavy, made of 83
sandblasted steel. Opening a door therefore involves using the whole weight of the body.

The core idea of the chiasm/intertwining204 for Merleau-Ponty is that the body is not a passive
object, nor only a perceiving subject. Rather, embodied perception implies that the body is si-
6
multaneously subject and object, it actively perceives and is perceived by others, or even itself.
The museum takes the idea of chiasm/intertwining beyond the perceptual aspects of its em-
bodied experience. In the Kiasma museum, the metaphor of the chiasmatic bond reappears in
an architectural work, as a scheme of a crossing of volumes, but also as an architectural ambi-
tion on a more conceptual level. The composition as a crossing of two entities, a metaphorical
translation of the chiasm, is perhaps the most superficial of all of the intertwinings that Holl
established with his design. Not only do the space of the mind and the space of the world
fuse in the experience of this building, as the most abstract translation of the concept sug-
gests, also different layers and stories of the city of Helsinki cross at the site of Kiasma. In this
case, the operations of anchoring and intertwining (chiasm) run parallel: the chiasm, here,
is precisely the operational concept that enables Holl to anchor the building to the site-spe-
cific conditions. Indeed, Holls Kiasma museum may be described in such terms. It evokes a
complex corporeal experience, which indeed evokes an intertwining of the subjective and the
202 Steven Holl, Parallax, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, p. 384.
203 Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected projects 1989-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007 5 Exhibition space. Filtered light from above, plastered walls and a lack of intermediate scale
[1996], p.90 elements.
204 Chiasm/Intertwining is exactly the title of the chapter in Merleau-Pontys The Visible and The Invisible 6 Detail of spiral staircase.

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objective. According to Catrhyn Vasseleu, who has in detail studied vision and touch in the
work of Merleau-Ponty, the chiasm describes the experience of corporeality as a complex . . .
moment of reversibility, vulnerability and incorporation.205 Indeed, in Kiasma, details evoke
an embodied experience of space. The strength of Holls approach might be found in this
evocation, in acknowledging that architecture actively calls upon the perception of its users
and visitors to become a lived part of its environment. The museum itself evokes reversibility,
vulnerability and incorporation it incorporates the narratives of the site and its history; it
is reversible in its very character, both formal and informal, both urban and natural; and it is
vulnerable in that it invites visitors to participate in its experience. Visitors of Kiasma are chal-
lenged to experience the differences in light, the sequence of perceptual frames, and to reverse
the relation between formal and informal, landscape and nature, active and passive, subject
1
and object. They are guided in this challenge by light and material, by spaces of silence and
spaces where art and city speak.

2.3.3 Evocative description in architectural education

The example of Steven Holls Kiasma museum in Helsinki shows how the notions explored in
this chapter can encourage architects to engage lived experience in their site-specific explora-
tions as well as in their designs. In this way, evocative description offers ways to respond to
84 the task of architecture to offer a meaningful relation between people and their environment, 85
2
or as Juhani Pallasmaa defines the task of architecture, to mediate between the world and
ourselves, and to provide a horizon by which to comprehend our existential condition.206
He writes this in an essay which is explicitly presented as an echo of Italo Calvinos Six Memos
for the Next Millennium.207 While Calvino spoke of a task for literature in the fast and continu-
ously changing contemporary society, precisely because there are things that only literature
can give us, by means specific to it,208 Pallasmaa replies that architecture, by its own means
of building, could provide meaningful places to inhabit. This imaginative dialogue with Italo
Calvino is one example of how literature, as well as other forms of art, take a prominent posi-
tion in Pallasmaas reflections, illustrating the productive exchange between architecture and
other disciplines in understanding the human experience of space.

In this chapter I have intended to show a potentially productive relationship between archi-
tecture and the literary concept of evocative description. I did not aim to draw a direct link
between literary texts and architectural projects, but rather wanted to show how a literary

205 Cathryn Vasseleu, Textures of Light. Vision and Touch in Irigay, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, Warnick Studies
in European Philosophy, Routledge, London 1998, p. 35
206 Juhani Pallasmaa, Six themes for the next millennium (1994), in: Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter MacKeith (editor)
Encounters. Architectural Essays, Rakennustietot Oy, Helsinki, 2005, p. 300
207 Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Vintage Books, New York, 1988
208 Ibidem, as quoted by Juhani Pallasmaa, Six themes for the next millennium (1994), in: Juhani Pallasmaa,
Peter MacKeith (editor) Encounters. Architectural Essays, Rakennustietot Oy, Helsinki, 2005, p. 299 1+2 Journals produced by students as results of the master course City&Literature 2007-2011.

description ~ Urban Literacy


approach, based on the concept of evocative description of architecture and place, could offer
new ways for architects to understand and use the experience of space and place. Literary
skills such as observation, imagination and receptivity prove to be highly relevant for archi-
tects to evocatively describe and design places. Through novels and poetry we have learned
how literary writers observe and imagine the relationship between people and their environ-
ment. Through exercises of observation and imagination, architects can be encouraged to
include lived aspects of space in their architectural considerations. The poetic receptivity to
sensory perception and detail can be trained to achieve a richer perceptual quality in design,
if we acknowledge that perception is not a passive undergoing of sensory impulses, but rather
a creative receptivity.209 In the preceding part of this chapter, I have shown how some indi-
vidual architects make use of these skills of evocative description in their practice; the follow-
2
ing shows a number of educational examples with which to draw the attention of architects
and students and to involve them in developing such skills.

Best known, perhaps, are John Hejduks courses at the Cooper Union School of Architecture
in New York.210 Hejduk, in his own work continuously fading the boundaries between ar-
chitecture and poetry, compiled a great number of student exercises that drew upon poetic
concepts. Aspects of dream and imagination often informed steps in the experimental design
process in the courses at the Cooper Union.
The less known Valparaiso School of Architecture in Chile is founded on the proposition of
employing the poetic word as the foundation of an architectural polemic.211 Part of the educa-
tional programme are yearly expeditions on the South-American continent, aiming to explore
86 the poetic qualities of the territories. The first journey, undertaken in the 1960s by a group of 87
3
architects and poets, is seen as the birth of the schools pedagogical approach.212 The pavilions
of the school, the so-called Open City, are literally built by teachers and students, as physi-
cal results of the schools self-conscious way of acting and thinking that sponsors an intuitive
process informed by spatial and poetic concerns.213 Poetry is not seen as a product (a poem) but
rather as an approach, a way of acting and doing creatively.214 The initial educational methods
of the school, such as the expeditions, proved successful, and are still actively used today.
At the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, postgraduate students are taught to explore

209 For Merleau-Ponty, perception is a creative receptivity rather than a passive capacity to receive
impressions. Cathryn Vasseleu, Textures of Light. Vision and Touch in Irigay, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, Warnick
Studies in European Philosophy, Routledge, London 1998, p. 24
210 See for a detailed overview of Hejduks pedagogical methods: Ulrich Franzen, Alberto Prez-Gmez and
Kim Shkapich, Education of an architect: a point of view, the Cooper Union School of Art & Architecture, Monacelli
Press, Michigan 1999; or the first version John Hejduk, Education of an Architect. The Irwin S. Chanin School of
Architecture of the Cooper Union, Rizolli Press, New York 1988
211 Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian, The Road That Is Not A Road and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1993, p.16.
212 The first journey Almereida and a number of more recent expeditions of the school are discussed in:
Patricio del Real, Wandering Around, in OASE 80, On Territories, Tom Avermate, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds and
Nancy Meijsmans (eds.), NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2009, pp. 61-69
213 Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian, The Road That Is Not A Road and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1993, p.13 2+3 Explore-Lab VI workshop Poetry and Architecture. Site-specific writing at the NDSM
214 Ibidem, p.23 wharf in Amsterdam.

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the creative potential of writing as a form of critical spatial practice. The course, set up
by Jane Rendell, aims at developing site-writing as a mode of operation in architectural re-
search and education. The students investigate a site of their choice and produce a text that
researches, critiques and responds physically to this site.215 In such writing, objective meas-
urements coincide with personal associations, combining observations and imagination in a
creative process.
In Stockholm, researchers Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes are conducting courses on writing in
practice-based architectural research. Grillner addresses writing both as a medium through
which to develop a critical position towards the architectural, design, or art project, and as
a means through which to carefully explore and/or design spatial conditions.216 Hughes,
himself a writer, holds a plea for introducing students, scholars and practitioners in the field
4a
of design to literary concepts and rhetorical practices, which can furnish the practical as
well as conceptual tools required to become not merely better scholars and critic, but also
better designers.217 Their exercises include site-specific writing, for example on the basis of
narratives, but they also see writing as a critical tool in the process of research and design.
Indeed, by writing from another viewpoint, the author can see his work in a different light. In
this way, writing offers critical counterpoints to the project, by taking the role of the critic in
relation to the project or even within the project itself .218

In the course City&literature I have initiated at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of
Technology, I have tested the viability of literary exercises for Master students of architecture.
Acknowledging that most architecture students do not have outspoken literary ambitions,
88 the aim was not to produce interesting literary texts, but rather to use literary exercises to 89
4b+c
heighten students perceptual receptivity and awareness of spatial experience. This course,
which is positioned in the curriculum as an elective connected to the Public Building/Public
Realm studios, offers ways to use writing as a tool in site research and design. As such, it aims
to broaden the students understanding of urban experience and to critically reflect on design
practices. The City&Literature course consists of several parts exploring the potential of a liter-
ary approach in site research and architectural design. Part 1, which takes the form of a theory
seminar, introduces a selection of key texts on cities, written from a literary perspective, such
as texts by Walter Benjamin and Italo Calvino. Also more theoretical texts on the relation
between architecture and literature, like Bachelards Poetics of Space are discussed. In part 2
the possibilities of creative writing are explored. By looking at the city from various (literary)
perspectives, the student is encouraged to develop new methods in both site analysis and
design. Part 3 consists of an analysis of literary practices. In this part, the work of architects
215 Jane Rendell, introduction to Haecceity Papers Volume 3 Issue 1: Pattern, fall 2007, pp. 4-5 4d+e
216 Katja Grillner in : Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes, Room within a view: a Conversation on Writing and
Architecture, in OASE 70 Architecture & Literature, Reflections/ Imaginations. Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik and
Madeleine Maaskant (eds.), Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, p. 58
217 Rolf Hughes in : Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes, Room within a view: a Conversation on Writing and
Architecture, in OASE 70 Architecture & Literature, Reflections/ Imaginations. Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik and
Madeleine Maaskant (eds.), Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, pp. 68-69
218 Katja Grillner in : Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes, Room within a view: a Conversation on Writing and
Architecture, in OASE 70 Architecture & Literature, Reflections/ Imaginations. Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik and
Madeleine Maaskant (eds.), Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, p. 58 4a-e Switching between text and model-making.

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using literary influences in their work is analysed and discussed. Different techniques, both
literary and architecturally, are used to present the findings. At the end of the semester, the
seminar group starts to function as an editorial board of a magazine. The group decides how
to collect the theoretical reflections and the results of creative writing exercises in a magazine,
which is presented to visiting critics at the last session. The creative writing exercises begin
with drawing attention to other senses than the visual. One of the first exercises, when the stu-
dents have just joined the first meeting, is to describe their journey from home to the lecture
room at the faculty, solely by describing the sounds they have heard. It is a simple, accessi-
ble exercise, but it often surprises students in how much they have unconsciously perceived.
Similar descriptive exercises, in which one specific sense is highlighted, are carried out in
relation to the students site of investigation. When the design of the students come into play,
5
aspects of time, weather, site-specific circumstances or characters are used in their descrip-
tions, moving from the observational to the imaginary. Creative writing about their designs
involves imagining the future place as lived. This is encouraged by exercises that presuppose
another character, which enables students to perceive the design from another point of view.
In this way, indeed as Katja Grillner suggests, writing becomes an act of critical reflection of
and within the project. By means of such writing exercises, students in the course have gained
critical knowledge about their own design, and have been able to alter or sharpen their design
decisions.

In summer 2008, I conducted the workshop Poetry and Architecture, of the Explore-Lab grad-
uation studio at the Faculty of Architecture.219 During five days, students were challenged
90 to develop a creative receptivity through exercises of poetic writing in combination with 91
6
model-making. The first days, theoretical and conceptual thinking were set aside in favour
of direct bodily perception. A choreographer took the students on a tour to trigger the senses,
by physical explorations of weight, direction and movement. By being blindfolded, students
were made aware of other senses than the visual. This sense of blindness reoccurred later in
the week when a dinner was organized in a dark restaurant. The former harbour terrain
NDSM in Amsterdam was the site of investigation for the workshop. Arriving by boat, the stu-
dents approached the site from the rough concrete ramps that used to hold large vessels. The
ramp, by its very dimensions, materiality and position, already gave way to an extraordinary
spatial experience. Its tilted surface slightly changed the sense of balance, its vast dimensions
confused the sense of scale, and its being enclosed by concrete obstacles on one side, and the
rusty steel ship-lock on the waterside, evoked the impression of being simultaneously in an
enclosed interior and in a vast landscape. The concrete and rusty steel objects, overrun by
grass and brambles, contributed to an atmosphere loaded with memory. It was this environ- 7
ment that students were encouraged to explore, some of them barefoot to feel the texture,
temperature and materiality of the surface, some set out for textual traces in the many objects

219 This workshop was initiated by the Explore-Lab VI students. The organising team consisted of students
Kees Lemmens, Arno Geesink, Elza Heemskerk, Wouter Moorlag, Sybren Boomsma and Ferry int Veld. Three
other tutors have been invited: Ana Mafalda Luz, Laura Theng and Alberto Alts. Apart from the twenty
Explore-Lab students from Delft, ten students from Istanbul have joined the workshop, as well as two students 5 Diploma project Lieke Sauren. Analysis of bodily perception and sound.
from Barcelona. A report of the workshop has been published in The Architecture Annual 2007-2008, Delft 6+7 Diploma project Lieke Sauren. Design for a pedestrian route along the south bank of the IJ,
University of Technology/ 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2009, pp. 44-47 Amsterdam.

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lying around and the sheer amount of colourful graffiti textssprayed on the concrete surfaces, direction and material.222 The visitors centre, situated along the public route, is designed with
while others searched for places of silence within the site. Each individual encounter with the great attention for light, materiality and view. Some parts of this building, such as a public
site was put into words. The poetic texts derived from these explorations served the following staircase and a viewing platform, have deliberately been designed to remain open to the ele-
day as the basis for the intuitive model-making from materials collected at the site. The in- ments, to allow the experience of the strong winds, the smell of water and sounds of activity,
dividual models and poems were discussed in groups, and the outcome of these discussions that so characterize the city of Amsterdam.
were again, but this time collectively, put into words. The last endeavour was a collective one
using the collective poems for a final model, installation or written manifesto. In the big 1:1 Coming to the end of this chapter through a number of student projects, a reflection on the
scale tent, put up on the faculty terrain by one of the groups as a result of their explorations, chapter of Description is appropriate. I have started from the question of definition what is
the closing dinner was served. From an educational point of view, it is important to mention an evocative description of space in literature by actually describing its manifestation in
that the process, shifting from one discipline to another, using words and models, was more various literary sources. I have then approached the question of relevance why it is im-
important than the concrete built, drawn or written results. The main goal was for students to portant to explore such notions in architecture by formulating a critique on the lack of
develop a receptivity for the very characteristics of a site, through their own sensory percep- attention to aspects of lived experience in contemporary architectural discourse and practice,
tions, imagination and associations. The sequence from text to model and back to text guided and by highlighting a number of relevant theoretical positions from the field of philosophy,
an intuitive process that was productive on both the individual and the collective level. The geography and architectural theory. I hope to have shown in the last part of this chapter how
repetitive shifting between modes of production helped to quickly produce and to collectively architects have managed to address such issues, and how architects and students alike can be
discuss products, which in turn allowed for a shifting between intuition and analysis. In that trained through evocative description to develop a sensitivity to site-specific elements and to
way, the chosen educational model offered the students a way to develop a creative receptiv- reach a better understanding of the human experience of space. The concept of description
ity, as well as offering tools to make such receptivity operational in architectural design. as an instrument in architecture thus brings together aspects of literature, phenomenology,
human sciences and architectural design, and allows for these various disciplines to work
The last educational example that I wish to discuss in this chapter is the graduation project together. As such, the concept of description allows the architect to widen his or her gaze , of-
of architect Lieke Sauren, carried out over the course of a year in the Public Realm diploma fering a variety of perspectives and layers of perception that are often neglected. Ultimately,
studio.220 In this project of research and design, aspects of evocative description are explicitly description entails the evocative site-specific reading and rewriting, engaging lived experi-
92 used, in a critique against alienation, aloofness and isolation221 caused by the dominance ence in research and design. 93
of transitional space in the contemporary city. Following a theoretical study about the rela-
tionship between the body and the public realm, Sauren began to investigate the banks of
the Amsterdam IJ River by means of veritable bodily encounters. Using her experience as a
dancer, Sauren selected a number of places around the IJ-banks, differing in size, materiality
and atmosphere, and allowed her body to react to the sounds, the play of light and shadows,
the extent of enclosure or vastness, and the views towards the water. She discovered how the
body reacted differently to different spatial characteristics of the sites, by moving slower or
faster, changing direction, seeking open space or protection from objects, walls and trees. She
then chose to focus her further research and design on the South banks of the IJ, where, she
noticed, embodied experience was most disturbed by the sound and speed of traffic. In order
to establish a better pedestrian connection between the city centre and the waterfront, she
designed a public path extending from the rear of Amsterdam central station, along the river-
bank, towards the public quay further east. A route, states Sauren, that not only links places,
but also makes people aware of their surroundings, so that the place itself gains significance; a
slow movement at the waterside, one that plays with the differences in height and changes in

220 The diploma studio Public Realm at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft is organised by Susanne Komossa
and myself. The group of which Lieke Sauren was part, Public Realm Amsterdam IJ-banks, was tutored by
myself, in collaboration with Marten de Jong and Jan Engels in 2005-2006.
221 Lieke Sauren, Waterfront on the move, in: The Architecture Annual 2006-2007, Delft University of Technology
/ 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2008. pp. 184-186 222 Ibidem, p.184

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3.1 transcription
3 TRANSCRIPTION 3.1.1 Writing across: social activity in literary spaces

I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouch-
able, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference of departure, of origin . . . Such
places dont exist, and its because they dont exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-
evident . . . Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it. Its never mine, never given to
me, I have to conquer it.223

As Georges Perec suggests in this fragment, the relationship between architecture and the
activities of the people who use and inhabit it is not neutral. This chapter departs from the
observation that architecture is influenced by social practices, and that even so, architecture,
by giving shape to peoples environment, has its influence on social behaviour. This dynamic
relationship between people and places is the key focus of this chapter, and I introduce tran-
scription as a conceptual tool to address this interactivity. First, the very word Transcription
implies a directional way of writing: trans is the Latin preposition across or through. The
etymological dictionary notes: to write across, i.e. to transfer in writing.224 The directional
aspect that the word transcription implies, is crucial in that transcription can be understood
94 as a dynamic notion. First, I will show how aspects of movement and activity in literary writ- 95
ings are closely connected to the spaces in which they take place, and often point at social
practices; offering information about the way people move through, use and appropriate
space. Literary texts on how people behave in the city shine a light on power relations in
society, showing how the social codes of different user groups relate to specific urban places.
Therefore, such literary urban portraits are of interest for sociologists, cultural philosophers
and others concerned with social and spatial practices. A second aspect of transcription that I
wish to discuss has to do with its potential as an experimental practice: it searches the bound-
aries of the discipline by writing through. Literary examples are the experimental practices
of the literary movement Oulipo, or the spatial literature of Joyce and Danielewksi. In these
writings space, even the space of the novel itself, is constantly questioned, designated, marked
or conquered. Here, I will highlight issues of transgression and violation within the space of
literature, providing a passage to an architectural discussion of these concepts further on in
this chapter. Third, I will address the commonly used meaning of transcription as to write a
version of something, or to write in a different medium; transliterate.225 When looking for
direct transcriptions into other media, the transcriptions of literary scenes in film or theatre
are probably most common. I will briefly discuss some attempts to transcribe literary scenes

223 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, London 2008, p. 91 [Espces d espace , Editions Galile,
Paris 1974]
224 Origins. A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. Eric Partridge, Greenwich House, New York 1983
[1958], p. 598, entry 22. transcribere.
225 The Penguin Pocket English Dictionary, Penguin Group, London 1990 [1985], p. 904, entry transcribe

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to architectural ones. Writing another version of a text, however, can also happen within lit- Benjamins flaneur, as well as Baudelaires man on the street for instance, were literary
erature itself, namely through the reader, who can take on the role of an active participant. characters that could only have been born out of the new urban conditions. Likewise, the
This brings me to discuss the interactivity between writer and reader as producers of the text. literary accounts of Paris and Berlin have had a role in producing new forms of urban life,
and in producing new images of the cities, by the characters given to them by writers. Phi-
First, let us look at the meaning of transcription as a dynamic process, moving from one realm losopher Gilles Deleuze sees literary writers as the symptomatologists of society, and some
to another. In literary works, spatial metaphors often have to do with direction and move- of them may, through literature, offer valuable alternatives to social problems and complex
ment: power relations.229 Deleuze sees a task for literature in experimenting on the real . . . at once
In the common use of terms such as perspective, point-of-view, and passage, we see that where fashioning a critique of power and opening a passage towards new possibilities of living.230
a person stands in relation to surroundings or materials is a central consideration for both This idea of literature as a passage to new ways of living can also be true for architecture.
architects and writers . . . Literature is . . . full of passages in the architectural sense, taking the If indeed when properly constructed, [literary works] are machines that make something
reader from here to there and back again.226 happen,231 one could state the same for architectural works. If we consider architecture as
Indeed, in writing about spaces, the aspect of action implied by the space: a passage, a pathway, a dynamic, rather than a static notion, architecture can offer space for action, showing new
a threshold, a door, an opening to another space, can play a part in the narrative. Space can ways to live.
encourage characters to move, pass though, undertake action. In literary reflections about
changes in society, architectural and urban scenes not only serve as the decor against which Walter Benjamins reflections about the Parisian arcades (or passages in French)232 are but
narratives of activity can unfold, these scenes also play an important part in depicting social one example of literature that tells how intrinsically space and social practice are connect-
practices. As Marilyn Chandler argues in her investigation of houses in American fiction, our ed. According to Ren Boomkens, Benjamin was a collector of important data, considering
built environment, and the way we live in it, has a good deal to do with the way we tell our almost every aspect of the nineteen century Parisian culture and society, which together lay
stories . . . both architecture and literature are simultaneously reflective and formative social a basis for a philosophy of modern urban experience.233 This catalogue of data included
forces. In both, implicit issues of gender and class lie behind the politics of style.227 Indeed, numerous descriptions of how people behaved in urban space, most notably the one of the
literature both reflects the social codes and the use of the city, while it may also take part in its flaneur as a new type of urban character, with his own way of perceiving urban life. Even
process of change. In their own ways, both architecture and literature represent, reflect on and though Benjamins work in collecting and describing urban life has never resulted in a liter-
96 produce societal behaviour. Literary expressions of urban life have helped sociologists and ary novel, his work is, I would argue, to a large extent literary: by its use of characters, and by its 97
other theorists to understand the relationship between architectural and urban space and attention to details, for instance. Numerous examples exist of literary texts revealing similar
social practice. Sociologist Richard Sennett, for example, often refers to literary descriptions observations of urban life, in which the spaces described are closely connected to human ac-
when discussing the changes in early modern society. Especially in that early modern period, tivities, of which the urban portraits by Charles Baudelaire, to whom Benjamin so frequently
around the turn of the nineteenth century, literature, by witnessing the impact of social refers, is but one.234 In such novels, the relationship between urban places and social practice
changes, played a role in their conceptualization, as well as in their production. This role is fully explored. James Joyce, for instance, depicts everyday life in Dublin through the urban
of literature was particularly important because of the confusion that modern life brought experiences of the various protagonists in Dubliners.235 Through the everyday patterns of these
about. As Sennett explains: inhabitants, the city is shown to include multiple layers of experience: the act of shopping
Ordinary experience never presents itself [as] sharply [as the novelist describes them], but
the cities of the nineteenth century were particularly unclear. . . . One way to hold [the] magic 229 Ronald Bogue has in detail discussed Deleuzes use of literature throughout his philosophical works.
mirror up to social reality was to turn places into characters . . . personifying specific places Borgue frequently refers to Deleuzes metaphor of health: literary writers as symptomatologists of sickness in
helped the nineteenth-century writers in a task that falls upon all novelists, that of connecting society, and as the ones capable offering new possibilities. Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Literature, Routledge, New
York / London 2003, See for symptomatology especially chapter one, Sickness, Signs, and Sense, pp. 9-30.
events widely separated in time.228
230 Ibidem, pp. 188
231 Language as a mode of action Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Literature, Routledge, New York / London 2003,
226 In OASEs issue on Architecture&Literature, Stockholm-based researchers Katja Grillner and Rolf pp. 187-192,
Hughes discuss the variety of metaphors shared by architectural and literary discourses. Katja Grillner and 232 Walter Benjamin, Das Passagenwerk, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1982 [1943-40]
Rolf Hughes, Room within a View: A Conversation on Writing and Architecture, in: OASE 70 Architecture&Literature 233 Ren Boomkens. Een drempelwereld. Moderne ervaring en stedelijke openbaarheid, NAi publishers, Rotterdam
Reflections/Imaginations, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, 2006, pp. 58-59 1998, pp.114-115, translation from Dutch kmh
227 Marilyn R. Chandler, Dwelling in the Text. Houses in American fiction, University of California Press, 234 In the early modern city of the nineteenth century, the French writer Charles Baudelaire used literary
Berkeley, 1991, p.6 evocations of places as a mirror to understand the confusing modern city of which he was part.
228 Richard Sennett, The Consciousness of the Eye, Knopf, New York 1991, p. 190-191, see for Sennetts literary 235 James Joyce, Dubliners, Everymans Library, London, 1991 [1914]. This reference was also made in my earlier
references concerning the changes in public urban life also: Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, Knopf, New article in OASE, Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik and Madeleine Maaskant (eds.), OASE 70 Architecture&Literature
York, 1974, London 2002 Reflections/Imaginations, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, 2006

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in the city, the social role of the boarding house or the theatre, the manners when travel- of its various inhabitants in Life. A Users Manual.239 Simultaneously, his meticulous descrip-
ling by tram, the frequent encounters in bars, the stratified society featuring gentry, maids tion of these daily practices shines a light on the conditions of French society at the time.
and servants. His Dutch contemporary, Louis Couperus, depicted the bourgeois life of his Nowadays, Dutch writer of historical novels Geert Mak uses the life of his family to discuss the
protagonist Eline Vere against the background of the urban scenes of The Hague at the turn social and spatial changes in Dutch society that took place in the twentieth century.240
of the twentieth century. In Couperuss The Hague, the Royal Theatre is the place to see other
people and to be seen, while the private houses form the stage for intimate meetings between
families. The social codes of the bourgeois families are linked with the city and its seasons:
in winter, the public urban spaces are presented as dark passages, where the carriages of the 3.1.2 Writing through:
rich families travel, often haunted by wind and storm, between the theatre and the warm and
richly decorated houses. In summer, the beach in Scheveningen becomes the place to meet
transcription as experimental practice
one another. In the urban spaces of Couperus, social codes are clearly described: rich families
have designated areas at the beach and travel by carriage, while ordinary citizens travel to the Transcribing, in the sense of writing another version, also points at the interactivity between
shore by horse-tram: different disciplines: a piece of music can be transcribed for another instrument, for instance,
The trams leading from the old Scheveningseweg to the Kurhaus were filled to burst. On the tram stop or literary scenes are presented in cinema. In such cases, the question remains what is kept
Anna Paulownastraat - Laan Copes van Cattenburgh they were stormed by the waiting crowd. In an from the original version, and what has been lost. A commonly heard remark about films
instant, a large amount of people had filled the wagons and overloaded the platforms, or even climbed based on novels is that the book was better than the film. Indeed, a transcription implies an
on the roof rack. They pushed each other, grave of countenance, even for the sake of the least standing interpretation by the transcriber, which excludes some aspects of the original in favour of
place, merciless for desperate fellows. Many of them were women, with an arched nervousness, and a others. Reflecting on the notion of transcription, writer Salman Rushdie states that the art
colorful flurry of light toilets walking around the tram, peering through the glass for a hint of an empty of transcription lies in finding the essence of the original version, and developing a second
spot. . . . version that, however different, embodies the soul of the first. For a successful transcription
. . . . the people left behind immediately looked the other way for the following tram, because hey, the though, a good copy is not enough: the second version should be of value in itself, adding new
horses were already in motion and the serious faces of the happy passengers were closely packed, shining qualities to the original. Rushdie extends the notion of transcription to a social level:
98 with happiness after their victory. As individuals, and as communities and nations, we are continuously busy to adapt ourselves 99
What a foule! Its terrible, said Eline, looking down at the crowd with a quiet smile. She sat next to . . . Like artistic adaptation or transcription, in order to succeed, the process of social, cultural,
Betsy in the open Landauer. Dirk, the coachman, had been compelled for a moment to stand still, but and individual adaptation should be free, and not fixed. Who sticks too rigidly to the original
now there was some movement in the traffic jam of carriages on the road. . . . And while Dirk drove past text, to the case that has to be transcribed, to the old behaviour, the past, is doomed to create
their carriages, she greeted her acquaintances with a most charming kindness: she surely did not want something malfunctioning, an unhappy feeling, an alienation, a quarrel, a failure, a loss.241
to have an air of proudness, even if her chestnut horses trotted so gracefully.236
When we regard transcription as a practice to transgress the boundaries of the disciplines and
Likewise, German accounts of the life of the turn-of-the-century bourgeois rely largely to explore the possibilities within its structure and content, we arrive at a number of experi-
on the literary explorations of Alexander Dblin and other authors. In Dblins Berlin mental approaches in literature. Indeed, these works may be seen as transcriptions, transgress-
Alexanderplatz,237 the conflicting relation between the protagonist Franz Biberkopf and the ing the borders of the literary discipline. In some experimental literary practices, architecture
modern city of Berlin depicts, as Bart Keunen remarks, the tragic duality between the city has been a source of inspiration, not only as a subject, but also as a means to structure a nar-
and the city dweller.238 On the scale of architecture, Georges Perec makes an apartment build- rative. In his novel Life. A Users Manual (la vie mode demploi), Georges Perec uses the spatial
ing come to life in the minds of the readers by writing about the daily activities and habits structure of the apartment building as a framework instead of a chronological structure.242
The literary constructions of James Joyces writings, most notably the novel Ulysses, are known

239 Georges Perec, La Vie mode d emploi, translated in English as Life. A Users Manual. See for a detailed
236 Louis Couperus, Eline Vere, een Haagse roman, Rainbow klassiek, Amsterdam, 2006 [1889], p. 226-228, discussion of this novel of Perec the dissertation of Manet van Montfrans: Georges Perec, la Contrainte du reel,
translation kmh. A recent English translation by Ina Rilke has been published as Louis Couperus, Eline Vere. A Atlanta, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1999
Novel of The Hague, Archipelago Books, New York 2010. 240 Geert Mak, De eeuw van mijn vader. [My Fathers Century] Atlas Publishers, Amsterdam/Antwerp 1999
237 Alexander Dblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Continuum, London/ New York 1961 / 2004 [Berlin 1929] 241 Salman Rushdie , Bewerking van boeken tot films is een doolhof van spiegels en faades [Transcription from
238 Bart Keunen, De Verbeelding van de Grootstad. Stads- en wereldbeelden in het proza van de moderniteit, VUB books to films is a labyrinth of mirrors and faades], NRC Handelsblad, Opinie&debat, March 7 2009, p. 2
Press, Gent University, Brussels 2000 [The Imagination of the Metropolis. City- and Worldviews in the prose of (translation from Dutch kmh)
modernity], p. 295, translation from Dutch kmh. 242 Georges Perec, Life, a Users Manual The Harvill Press, London, 1996 [La Vie mode d emploi, 1978]

transcription ~ Urban Literacy


for their complicated spatiality, even compared by Jennifer Bloomer to the complex spatial literary references, Ronald Bogue discusses the notion minor literature, which points at
constructions in Piranesis etches.243 She describes the complexity of Joyces novel Finnegans transgressing the boundaries of mainstream literature. The concept was used in the study
Wake as follows: that Deleuze, together with Felix Guattari, made on the work of the writer Franz Kafka. Minor
Finnegans Wake is a monumental construction, a quasi three-dimensional text, and in its literature is understood as a literature of small groups, often a specified cultural minority,
interwoven and colliding geometrics, its incorporation of familiar, old materials and entities which often comes together with a particular appropriation of language.248 Literature written
and fragments, its various connections, and its ambiguous signification it contains an intri- in such a context, claims Deleuze, is particularly strong in revealing societal issues. This is
cate architectonic that reinforces its identity with the city.244 indeed the case for Kafka, who, as Bogue argues after Deleuze, developed a particularly re-
Such structural experiments on the boundaries of architecture and literature indeed prove in- ductive vocabulary of Prague German.249 A similar experimental use of language, deliberate
spiring transgressions of disciplinary boundaries. Contemporary author Mark Z. Danielewski transformations of vocabulary, structure, rhythm and meaning can also be found in many lit-
uses architecture as both the subject and the means of his experimental writing. His House of erary works of the modern avant-garde. Indeed, minor literature may not only be understood
Leaves is constructed of a complex series of interrelated narratives and references, in which as the literature of cultural and linguistic minorities, but also as a literature which entails an
even the (graphic) space of the book itself plays a part. In this literary thriller, architecture experimental use of language. As such, Deleuzes notion of minor literature can be seen as a
might be regarded as the core of the novel: it structures the narrative, forms the construction, theoretical concept showing the value of experimental practices, and relate them again to the
generates the tension, and the house at some point becomes the key protagonist, coming to social aspects of space. Bogue agrees with Deleuze that for the minor writer: . . . expressions
life through its changing measurements, accommodating intrigues and secrets.245 The book must break forms, mark new ruptures and branchings. A form being broken, reconstruct the
narrates through the detailed description of the fictive film The Navidson Records, about the content that will necessarily be in rupture with the order of things.250
horrors of a haunted house. The book contains numerous layers: the story of the house and
the Navidson family; the discussion of the (fictive) film by Navidson, representing this story; Literary group Oulipo, which stands for Ouvroir de la Littrature Potentielle, the workshop
theoretical reflections of the (fictive) original author Zampno, who tends to use fictive re- of potential literature, experimented with form and meaning of their texts in order to find
search statements made about the film, as well as a vast series of footnotes of a (fictive) reader/ new potentialities. The idea of potentiality had to do with generating unforeseen possibili-
editor called Johnny. In the narrative, the first sign of the activity of the house is the sudden ties, an other literature:
appearance of an indoor hallway, the dimensions of which seem larger than the size of the Potentiality, more than a technique of composition, is a certain means of conceiving litera-
100 house would objectively allow. For the residents, the Navidson family, this is ture [which] opens onto a perfectly authentic modern realism. For reality never shows more 101
than a part of itself, authorizing a thousand interpretations, significations and solutions, all
. . . a physical reality the mind and body cannot accept.246 equally probable.251

And it is this disturbing reality of hidden spaces that gradually expands to frightening pro- Therefore, members of Oulipo, among which were Georges Perec, Italo Calvino and Raymond
portions as the story goes along, until the house accommodates vast, dark spaces in which Queneau, explored the possibilities of new forms of literature. They studied and used rules
expeditors get lost after days of wandering. References are made to the spatial experiments of and constraints in literature, such as fixed form poetry, methods of substitution, like the S+7
Escher and Piranesi as well as to mythical and literary labyrinths, which feature impossible method, which substitutes letters for the 7th next letter in the alphabet; displacement tech-
spaces. In The House of Leaves the narrator reflects: niques such as inversion; multiplication, which includes the use of rhyme and alliteration; or
subtraction.252 The latter technique, for instance, was used in Georges Perecs lipogrammatic
What took place amounts to a spatial violation which has already been described in various ways
namely surprising, unsettling, disturbing but most of all uncanny. 247 248 Franz Kafka, for instance, was a Czech Jew, with a specific cultural and linguistic background. Ronald
Bogue, Deleuze on Literature, Routledge, New York / London 2003, pp. 91-114 .
249 Bogue, 2003, p.102
Indeed, these experiments on the border of architecture and literature allow us to investigate 250 Bogue, 2003, p.110, quoting from Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, Kafka, Pour une litterature mineure
the interactive roles of architecture and its users or inhabitants. In his analysis of Deleuzes Paris 1975 / Kafka, Toward a Minor Literature Minneapolis 1986.
251 Jacques Bens, Queneau Oulipian, in: Warren F. Motte, OULIPO, a primer of potential literature, Dalkey
243 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The (s)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University Press, New Archive, Normal 1998 (1986), p.67
Haven/London, 1993 252 The writers of the Oulipo group frequently referred to Raymond Roussel, the French writer who ex-
244 Ibid. p.12 perimented with rules and constraints in the early decades, for example in his novel, Impressions dAfrique of
245 Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, Doubleday/Transworld Publishers, London 2001 (Anchor, 2000) 1910.He revealed his method in Comment jai crit certains de mes livres [How I wrote some of my books] which
246 Ibidem, p.30 appeared in 1935, two years after his death. Recently, Enrique Walker brought up his work again in the context
247 Ibidem, p.24. See also Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny. essays in the modern unhomely, MIT Press, of architecture, in the article Under Constraint in Michiel Riedijk (ed.) Architecture as a Craft, Architecture,
1994 Drawing, model and position, SUN Publishers, Amsterdam, 2010, pp. 25-33

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novel La Disparition (translated as A Void): a novel written without using the letter e.253 Also Who you are, Reader, your age, your status, profession, income it would be indiscreet to ask. Its your
spatial and mathematical constructions were used as generators of new literary forms. Perecs business, youre on your own. What counts is the state of your spirit now, in the privacy of your home,
novel Life. A Users Manual, was written within a very strict framework of the 10x10-1 composi- as you try to re-establish perfect calm in order to sink again into the book; you stretch out your legs, you
tion of the apartment building in which the narratives takes place.254 Italo Calvinos Invisible draw them back, you stretch them again. But something has changed since yesterday. Your reading is
Cities also answer to a numeric construction. Raymond Queneau explored the effect of style by no longer solitary: you think of the Other Reader, who, at this same moment, is also opening the book;
rewriting the same short story of a bus trip multiple times in various styles.255 Queneaus Cent and there, the novel to be read is superimposed by a possible novel to be lived . . . This is how you have
Mille Milliard de Pomes was a work of poetry set up as a matrix, thereby containing an endless changed since yesterday, you who insisted you preferred a book, something solid, which lies before you,
amount of possible poems. This combinatory literature256 thus offers multiple possibilities easily defined, enjoyed without risks, to a real-life experience, always elusive, discontinuous, debated
and in that sense corresponds to Oulipos collectively formulated approach, stating that the . . . Then from the very first page you realize that the novel you are holding in your hands has nothing to
future can only be seen as a bouquet of Imaginary Solutions that is, of potentialities.257 do with the one you were reading yesterday . . .260
Queneaus poem is composed precisely so that it can be read differently by each new reader.
Thereby, the idea of potentiality also opens up the field of tension between reader and writer. At some point in the book, the reader becomes a protagonist. Being curious about a book, the
you is made to arrange a meeting with a professor at a university. The reader thus becomes
an active character, who is even given physical actions.
You arrive punctually at the university, you pick your way past the young men and girls sitting at the steps,
you wander bewildered among those austere walls . . . Reader, we are not sufficiently acquainted for me
3.1.3 Writing another version: the role of the reader to know whether you move with indifferent assurance in a university or whether old traumas or pondered
choices make a universe of pupils and teachers seem a nightmare to your sensitive and sensible soul.261

As already came to the fore in the previous chapter regarding the notions of resonance-rever- The professors voice seems about to die away. You crane your neck, to make sure he is still there,
beration, Gaston Bachelard pointed at the active role of the reader : The reader participates beyond the bookcase-partition that separates him from your vision, but you are no longer able to
in the joy of creation . . . as though the reader were the writers ghost.258 If transcription is glimpse him . . .262
102 understood as to write a version of something, or to write in a different medium; transliter- 103
ate, this other version may also be seen as the version the reader produces by the very act of A similar role for the reader as an active participant is also present in the poem Voor wie dit
reading and interpreting.259 The potentiality that that Oulipo group refers to, may be under- leest by Dutch poet Leo Vroman. Here, the relation between reader and writer is presented as
stood in this light. In the novel If on a Winters Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino directly addresses one of reciprocity: the reader, waking up the words from their sleep; the writer, wishing to be
the reader as you, constantly confronting the reader with his expectations caused by the the page and to witness the effect his words may have on the reader.
narrative, and continuously questioning the line of thought of the reader. In this way, Calvino
makes the reader reflect on the very act of reading. as it was only love that could make
the pencil move in my dreams
when I fell asleep on what seems
253 A lipogram is a text from which one letter is left out. The idea has a long history: already in 1711, an this poem now so read it awake
attempt was made to translate the Ilias by Homer as a lipogram. Raymond Queneau, Potential Literature, as if I were under this page,
in: Warren F. Motte, OULIPO, a primer of potential literature, Dalkey Archive, Normal 1998 (1986), p.67; Georges as if barred by these lines I could feel
Perec, La Disparition, Denol, Parijs, 1969, [translated into English as A Void by Gilbert Ardair, The Harvill Press your pain reach into my cage
1995
to have and to heal.263
254 32 Sven Ltticken, Oulipo en de roman: Queneau, Perec en Calvino [Oulipo and the Novel: Queneau, Perec and
Calvino], in: Bzzletin 234, February 1997, Roussel, Perec, Queneau, BZZTH, The Hague, 1997, pp. 29-31. For 260 Italo Calvino, Se una notte dinverno un viaggiatore, Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino 1982, English translation
Perecs methods, Ltticken refers to David Bellos, Georges Perec, A Life in Words, London, Harvill Press 1993 by William Weaver: If on a Winters Night a Traveler, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich / University of Michigan, 1981,
255 Raymond Queneau, Exercises de Style, 1947, [translated as Exercises in Style, by Barbara Wright, 1958, p.32
Dutch translation by Rudy Kousbroek, Stijloefeningen, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1978 261 Ibidem, p. 47
256 Jacques Roubaud, Mathematics in the Method of Raymond Queneau in: Warren F. Motte, OULIPO, a 262 Ibidem, p. 70
primer of potential literature, Dalkey Archive, Normal 1998 (1986), p.67 263 Leo Vroman, Voor wie dit leest, originally published in Dutch in: Leo Vroman, Gedichten, vroegere en
257 Warren F. Motte, OULIPO, a primer of potential literature, Dalkey Archive, Normal 1998 (1986), p.67 latere, 1949; translated from Dutch as To whom this may concern by the author and Peter Nijmeijer, in:
258 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston Mass., 1994 p.xxvi James S. Holmes and Wiliam Jay Smith, Dutch interior: postwar poetry of the Netherlands and Flanders, Columbia
259 The Penguin Pocket English Dictionary, Penguin Group, London 1990 [1985], p. 904, entry transcribe University Press, New York Guildford, Surrey 1984, p.14

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French literary theorist Paul Ricoeur writes about the narrative in novels that: Finally, it is monly accepted. In this view, transcription provokes, rather than offering comfort, it searches
the reader who completes the work inasmuch as . . . the written work is a sketch for reading. the sublime, rather than the beautiful, and it points at difference, asking for an active partici-
Indeed, it consists of holes, lacunae, zones of indetermination, which . . . challenge the readers pation of its reader or user.
capacity to configure what the author seems to take malign delight in defiguring. . . . it is the
reader, almost abandoned by the work, who carries the burden of emplotment.264

In this fragment, Ricoeur refers to the extreme complexity of the narrative in James Joyces 3.2 telling places:
famous novel Ulysses. Some literary writers consciously challenge their readers to participate.
Like Calvino, but in an entirely different manner, James Joyce asks his readers to actively par-
narratives and social practice
ticipate. Jennifer Bloomer argues in her discussion of Joyces scripts that his composition, an
almost spatial assemblage of fragments referring to each other, forces an abandonment of
the idea of the reader as a passive receptor. The reader must engage, work on, rewrite this text. 3.2.1 Social spatial practices
The reader must be a writer . . . This reader-writer is a producer, an appropriator, a maker, an
assembler.265 Likewise, Michel de Certeau states that a text becomes inhabitable, like a rented
apartment. It transforms another persons property into a space borrowed for a moment by In the previous pages, I have distinguished three aspects of the notion transcription. First, I
a transient.266 De Certeau argues that reading is not a passive state of being. On the contrary, connected transcription to the dynamic character of literary writings on space. I have shown
it is an active participation, by means of which the reader is a co-producer of the text. While that in literature, space, particularly public urban space, is never neutral: it is the stage for
reading may seem a passive act, it has in fact: social activities. Therefore, literature has the capacity to offer precise accounts of social pro-
. . . all the characteristics of a silent production: the drift across the page, the metamorphosis cesses, not only as vivid portraits of urban life, but also as symptomatology of social illness,
of the text effected by the wandering eyes of the reader, the improvisation and expectation to speak with Deleuze. Literature can provide a cure in the sense that it can offer alternatives,
of meanings inferred from a few words, leaps over written spaces in an ephemeral dance . . . new directions for society. The second aspect of transcription I have brought to the fore is the
[The reader] insinuates into another persons text the ruses of pleasure and appropriation: other version, which, on the one hand has to do with transcriptions from one medium to
104 he poaches upon it, is transported into it, pluralizes himself in it . . . The thin film of writing another, but, on the other can be understood as an act of participation of the reader-user of 105
becomes a movement of strata, a play of spaces. A different world (the readers) slips into the the work: the reader, by his very act of reading, has a role in the production of the text. Third,
authors place.267 I have discussed the experimental character of transcription. This points at experiments within
De Certeau points here at a number of actions that the reader undertakes upon the text: he the use of language, or within the production of text, but also at experiments regarding the
appropriates it, makes it his own, he is transported into it. The text becomes a play of spaces. structure of the novel, and its content. They explore the possibility for confrontations and
Thus, De Certeau argues that reading, like other everyday practices, is an act of production. conflicts, openings to include the unexpected. In the continuation of this chapter, I will bring
The reader transforms codes and meanings by this appropriation. to the fore how these three aspects of transcription can be transcribed to architecture. In
other words, I will highlight how architecture is connected to social practices, stressing the
If transcribing indeed implies an active role of the reader as a producer, a maker of the text, role of the user of space in its production and experience; I will show the merit of experiment
architectural transcription might direct us to a similar role for the user of space. Architectural in architecture as a means to provoke confrontations between spaces, people and activity and
design, then, does not offer one single narrative, but allows for different stories to happen, it to allow for the unexpected within architectural experience; and I will show how literary in-
allows for confrontations between spaces, users and events. Transcribing in architecture, then, struments such as perspective and narrative can offer a passage to new ways of living.
could be a socially engaged form of experimentation, ultimately aimed at provoking new or
other uses of space, at challenging the unexpected, at transgressing boundaries of the co- In the previous chapter, I discussed the concept of lived experience, and Henri Lefebvres
contribution to the conceptualization of lived space. One of the key arguments that Lefebvre
made regarding lived space was indeed that such space is by definition socially produced.
264 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume I, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1990 Like the reader, who has a role in producing the (experience of ) the text, it is the user, the
[1984], p.77 [original in French: Temps et Rcit, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1993] inhabitant, the passer-by, who has a role in producing the lived experience of space. In other
265 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (s)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University Press, New
words, lived space exists precisely through the actions of its users, inhabitants and passers-by,
Haven/ London 1993, p.13
266 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, , University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, p.xxi [1984, it is dynamic and subject to change. It has ability to speak, as it were, to address the visitor,
original version in French: Arts de faire, 1984], p. xxi
267 Ibidem, p.xxi

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user or inhabitant: Representational space [lived space] is alive: it speaks.268 practices that give shape to public life in the city, because: The bureaucratized, simplified
For Lefebvre, society produces its own space, through its own means of production. Social prac- cities so dear to our present-day city planners and urban designers . . . run counter to the pro-
tices and structures of power thus play a role in this production of social space, and become cesses of city growth and economic development.276
visible in the streets and public spaces of everyday life. By analysing the behaviour of people Even though their contributions to the urban debate date from a specific period, their insights
in public urban spaces, social patterns can be found. In this way, Lefebvre argues, . . . social are far from outdated. Referring to both Henri Lefebvre and Jane Jacobs, the contemporary
space works as a tool for the analysis of society,269 or even, space is social morphology.270 urban theorist Edward Soja argues that they were right: the twenty-first century has indeed
In his earlier book The Urban Revolution, Lefebvre focuses specifically on urban society, claim- become the era of urban society, and therefore it is necessary to acknowledge and study the
ing that the city is inextricably linked with social practices of everyday life271. His hypothesis productive capacity of users.277 Soja illustrates his argument by referring to three levels of
is that society will become completely urbanized. He believes that the transformations he knowledge in Aristotles theory: epistme (the theoretical), techn (the technical) and phrone-
perceives in the society of Western Europe in the late 1960s will lead to an ultimately urban sis, the practical wisdom.278 Episteme refers to knowledge in a scientific sense and relates to
society: a dominance of the city over the country. This urban society will lead to a new prac- reasoning; techn refers to craftsmanship, and phronesis is a kind of knowledge derived from
tice: the urban practice.272 By this, he hints at a new mode of production: the citizen partici- practice, from common sense, from everydayness. According to Soja, the knowledge level of
pating in the production of space. This production can also entail transgression of spatial and phronesis is highly underestimated in spatial thought. Indeed, this is precisely the wisdom of
legal borders, as well as spatial violation, by means of which new rules, new spaces and new everyday practices, at stake in Lefebvres lived space and in Sojas own Thirdspace.279
forms of social life are initiated. Here, Lefebvre foresees a change in power structures: it is not
the institutions, the formal bodies of power, that write the laws and rules of society; rather, In this respect, a reflection on the work of Michel de Certeau is appropriate. This French theo-
urban society is produced by people, in the streets. The street is seen by Lefebvre as the place rist in social sciences and literature has proposed a shift in thinking about everydayness: seeing
where changes in society become apparent, society becomes produced and inscribed in the everyday practices as valuable aspects of culture. Like Lefebvre, De Certeau is interested in the
streets, and this has to do with the function of the street as a space for social interaction: role of users, or consumers, the word De Certeau employs for the dominated groups280, in
Revolutionary events generally take place in the street. . . . The urban space of the street is a the production of culture. First, he makes a distinction between the strategies that those in
space for talk, given over as much to the exchange of words and signs as it is for the exchange power develop in order to organize and dominate society, and tactics, the ways of operating
of things. A place where speech becomes writing. A place where speech becomes savage, and, of the dominated groups. Such tactics can use, manipulate, and divert281 the spaces that are
106 by escaping rules and institutions, inscribes itself on the walls.273 produced and imposed by means of strategies. Everyday practices such as talking, reading, 107
cooking and walking are, in his view, tactical. De Certeau argues that such practices have a
Clearly, this interest in the streets as the place where societal changes are enforced by citizens, much larger role in the production of society than is generally accounted for. It is through
derived from the momentum in which Lefebvres argument should be placed: The Urban Revo- walking in the city, through the repetition of routes and rituals, through daily meetings, chats
lution was published in France two years after the social events in Paris of 1968, when indeed with neighbours or shop owners, that inhabitants live and produce the urban life:
the streets were the locus for social and political change. The Right to the City that Lefebvre The ordinary practitioners of the city . . . walk an elementary form of this experience of the
advocates274 may be read as the right to the participant to transcribe and thereby to produce city; they are walkers . . . whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban text they write
new urban practices. without being able to read it. . . . The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose
Similarly, Jane Jacobs referred to the power of the citizens in her critical comments on urban
planning and economy in the 1960s and 1970s.275 She pointed out the importance of diversity 276 Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, Penguin edition, 1972 [1969], p. 97
in city life and stated that planners and politicians should pay more attention to everyday 277 Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Blackwell, Oxford,
1999 (1996)
268 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production despace, 278 Edward Soja, Putting Cities First, lecture at London School of Economics, London, December 5, 2006. The
Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974], p. 42 triad Episteme, techn and phronesis was introduced in Aristotles The Nicomachean Ethics. See for a discussion
269 Ibidem, pp.33-34 of these themes, Bent Flyvbjerg Making Social Science Matter, How social inquiry fails and how it can succeed
270 Ibidem, p.94 again, Cambridge University Press, 2001
271 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis/London 2003 [La 279 Thirdspace is a notion Edward Soja developed as a response to Lefebvres lived space. Soja defines
Rvolution urbaine, Editions Gallimard, Paris 1970] Thirdspace as a space in-between: a knowable and unknowable, real and imagined lifeworld of experiences,
272 Ibidem, p.5 emotions, events, and political choices. Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-
273 Ibidem, p.19 imagined places, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999 (1996), p. 31. Sojas idea of lived space / Thirdspace as a space between
274 Henri Lefebvre, Right to the City, in Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, translated and edited by Eleonore real and imagined will be further discussed in the Chapter Prescription.
Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Blackwell Publishing, London 2006 [1996], pp.63-184 280 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988 (1984), p. xi
275 The most influential of her books is: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage [Linvention du quotidien. Part 1. Art de Faire]
Books New York, 1992, Orginal edition published by Random House, New York, 1961 281 Ibidem, p. 30

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a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajecto- Of course, Michel de Certeau is not the first to enter the field of social spatial practices, though
ries and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely for my argument he is the most relevant, because he investigates this field through literary
other. . . . a migrational or metaphorical city thus slips into the clear text of the planned and means, as I will soon discuss in more detail. Indeed, De Certeau suggests that narrative can be
readable city.282 of great scientific value for research on social spatial practices:
De Certeau sets this urban life, generated by the patterns of its praxis, against the conceptual Shouldnt we recognize [the narratives] scientific legitimacy by assuming that . . . it cannot be,
city as seen from above. As a model for the rational Concept-City, imposed by the ones in or has not been, eliminated from discourse, narrativity has a necessary function in it, and that
power, visible from above, De Certeau uses the view of Manhattan seen from the top of the a theory of narration is indissociable from a theory of practices, as its condition as well as its produc-
former towers of the World Trade Center. In contrast to that birds-eye view, De Certeau points tion? To do that would be to recognize the theoretical value of the novel . . .286
at the city as experienced from below: a complex and barely visible conglomeration of the pat- The concept of narrative could be of great value if we are to see how a form of architectur-
terns of its users, full of turns, rituals and narratives. He recognizes in this city a different kind al transcription could come about. This is not only because literary narratives frequently
of spatiality, which is not a geometrical, but an anthropological space in which poetic experi- describe spatial practices, but also because of the role that stories play in the delimitation
ence plays a part. Similar to the productive role of the reader in appropriating and inhabit- of space, in defining its boundaries. A story makes people identify with a place, just as the
ing a text, De Certeau argues that the consumer actually produces through his everyday absence of stories leaves a space to neutrality.287
practices: Spatial practices . . . secure the determining conditions of social life.283
De Certeau distinguishes two roles for the story. First, it founds: it sets a field, it creates a stage
In order to analyse this neglected aspect of urban practices, De Certeau suggests we turn to on which actions can unfold. This field is by no means fixed and neutral. On the contrary, it
stories. He argures that literature provides an extensive source for research, and states that the can be fragmented, allowing different social groups to act upon it; miniaturized, offering
novel has become the zoo of everyday practices since the establishment of modern science.284 not only an account of a large community but also individual stories or stories related to only
We can indeed find accounts of this migrational and metaphorical city in literature. The small groups; and polyvalent, with many different voices and allowing multiple stories to
urban planner in Gyrgy Konrds novel The City Builder is well aware of the false image of coexist.288 Second, a story functions as a bridge and a frontier: it defines borders, delineates the
the Concept-City: he describes how a group of urban planners makes a tour by helicopter field. By articulating the frontier, it can also be appropriated, connections are made between
above the provincial town for which they are planning major interventions. Indeed, like De one side and the other. In this way it functions as a bridge, or again, as a passage.289 A story es-
108 Certeaus explanation of the Concept-City as seen from the top of the WTC in New York, here, tablishes an itinerary (it guides) and it passes through (it transgresses).290 It can thus be seen 109
the city is seen from the sky as a rational structure in which interventions can be made. While as a journey, a transport from one place to the other, transgressing borders. De Certeau refers
constructing their new, rationalized model of the city, however, the planners realize that in to the ancient Greek metaphorai, means of transportation. Indeed, if we look at the etymo-
fact, the chaotic layer of spatial practices, that unreadable city full of trajectories, contradic- logical origin of the word metaphor, we find that the first meaning is to bring across, indeed,
tions and multiple stories had its value: a transportation, be it physically, in space, or figuratively, in speech. The current meaning of
The dictator of perfect arches and angles vanished from our minds; we were careful now in putting metaphor, a figure of speech in which a certain concept or idea is explained by its analogy
our hand on the unaccustomed body of time and no longer wanted to imprint our thought patterns of with another, is thus also a form of transportation. Stories, says De Certeau, whether eve-
its dense configurations. For though the city was at the mercy of our remodeling furor, and we could ryday or literary, serve us as a means of mass transportation, as metaphorai.291 Space is thus
have imposed our simplistic solutions on the terrain, we were getting more and more anxious, and idly
flapped about over this disconcerting model. Lets face it: we liked this city; it resembled us, and the
colored drawings of children on gray asphalt. We began to look into the labyrinthine streets and saw 286 De Certeau 1984, p. 78, original italics
witty and mostly unorthodox solutions to tricky tasks, to which patient time had given its stamp . . . and 287 I need to stress here, that I use another definition of space and place than De Certeau. De Certeau
regards place (lieu) as something stable, which can be geometrically defined, and space (espace) as
that has come to resemble only itself. It was weathered, and profited from, the many gifts it has received
a practiced place... composed of intersections of elements, thus, made by practices, activity of users.
comely ones from men of talent, abominations from the unscrupulous. It also survived the marks of (Ibidem, p. 117) I would argues precisely otherwise. Space, to me, is rather neutral and can be described
our bungled efforts, the decaying signs of would-be uniqueness, conflagrations, explosions. We watched by its spatial properties, whereas place is connected to identity: place consists not only of spatial
a graceless communitys obstinate dialogue with its surroundings . . .285 properties, but also of social practices, stories, memories, etc. In that sense, I follow Edward S. Caseys
account of place in The Fate of Place, as discussed in this work, and Marc Augs antropological account of
282 De Certeau, 1984, p.93 place as defined by history, identity and relations. (Marc Aug, Non-Places. Introduction to an anthropology of
283 Ibidem, p.96 supermodernity, Verso, London/New York, 1995 [Non-lieux, 1992]
284 Ibidem, p.78 288 De Certeau 1984, pp. 123-125
285 Originally written in Hungarian in 1969-1973 as A vrosalapit, but first published in Germany as: 289 Ibidem, p.126
Gyrgy Konrd, Der Stadtgrnder, Paul List Verlag, Mnchen 1975. English translation by Ivan Sanders: 290 Ibidem, pp. 129
Gyrgy Konrd, The City Builder, The University of Michigan/ Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977, p.28. 291 De Certau 1984, p. 155

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part of a narration, but if indeed a story makes the reader transport from one place to another, Ricoeur goes back to Aristotles Poetics to study the concept of emplotment. The simple def-
movement is also part of a narration. inition that Ricoeur derives from this study is that narrative is the organization of events.
However, within this definition, a complex play of mimesis is at stake: a narration can indeed
This aspect of movement is of crucial importance if we want to connect the notion of narra- be seen as a mimesis (an imitation or representation) of human action. Even if every story
tive to architecture, because it means that narrative is spatial, but also temporal. The events has its originality, it is also connected to traditions in the way stories are constructed and told.
in a story unfold in space and time. In architectural practice, the temporal aspect is often In order to be understood, a story needs a certain extent of familiarity. Ricoeur distinguishes
forgotten. Strangely enough, the architects involvement in a project does not reach much three forms of mimesis in narration: a configurational mimesis, connected to the structure of
further than the day of the opening, while the life of the building or urban site starts after action; a mediating mimesis between the different factors that constitute a story; and an inter-
that: it changes in time, through use, activities, events. Spatial practices imply activity and secting mimesis, concerning the point at which the world of the writer and that of the reader
movement, and thus time; lived experience is experience in time. According to Lefebvre, intersect. The first aspect, the configuration of human action, relates to structure, symbol and
the contemporary focus on image has shifted the attention of architects and planners away time. Narrative can indeed structure the sequence of actions in various ways. Ricoeur speaks
from temporal experience, as the image detaches the pure forms from its impure content of a syntagmatic order296 in the organization of events. Then there is the role of signs and
from lived time, everyday time . . .292As Lefebvre has explained, lived space embraces loci of symbols, a narration of human action can only be understood if the reader is familiar with
passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus immediately implies time. Consequently, the culturally defined context: Human action can be narrated . . . because it is always already
it may be qualified in various ways: it may be directional, situational or relational, because articulated by signs, rules and norms. It is always already symbolically mediated.297 The tem-
it is essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic.293 Indeed, space changes, it is used, appropri- poral aspect of the narrative concerns the way the temporal dimensions of past, future and
ated and transformed by everyday life. Space is thus not a thing but rather a set of relations present all come together in the present of the narration. Referring to Heideggers notion of
between things.294 This relational aspect is important for our account of spaces and the role Zeitlichkeit (temporality), Ricoeur explains how the words future, past and present dis-
of the architect-writer. If space is indeed relational, we cannot define the task of architecture appear, and time itself figures as the exploded unity of the three temporal extases.298 The
as to design a fixed space, in which all actions are pre-programmed. Rather, the task could be, mimesis of action thus implies a preunderstanding of what human acting is, in its semantic,
as in a story, to found a field upon which actions and transformations can take place in time. in its symbolic system, in its temporality.299 It is such pre-understanding of both writer and
reader that allows a story to be told and understood.
110 The second mimesis that Ricoeur discusses is the mediating role of the plot. A narrative me- 111
diates at different levels: between the separate events and the story as a whole; between het-
3.2.2 Narrative: activity in space and time erogeneous factors such as agents, goals, means, interactions, circumstances, unexpected
results;300 between different temporal characteristics; between the intellectual and the intui-
tive. The third aspect of mimesis brings us back to the active role of the reader in narrative:
By a further discussion of the concept of narrative, I hope to show how this notion can help this is the intersection between the imagined world of the writer and the real world of the
to address the social, dynamic and participatory character of lived space. French author Paul reader. It is the reader who finally, through the act of reading, connects the different details
Ricoeur has theorized the connection between the construction of a story and temporality in of the story and understands it as a whole. In reading, he takes up and fulfils the configura-
his study Time and Narrative. He explains how time and narration are inseparable. The world tional act and actualizes its capacity to be followed.301 Here, we arrive again at the interac-
that is revealed by the story is in any event of a temporal character simply because human tive relationship between writer and reader, and the readers active participation in the story.
experience is temporal. Ricoeur argues that: If we follow De Certeaus ideas on the role of the story and Ricoeurs threefold analysis of nar-
The world unfolded by every narrative work is always a temporal world. . . . Time becomes rative, we can transcribe some characteristics of these literary concepts to the field of architec-
human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of the narrative; narrative in ture. If we indeed see architecture as dynamic, rather than static, as social, rather than formal,
turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.295 and as participatory, rather than imposing, a narrative approach to architecture can offer a
passage to explore its relation to human action and temporality. If the role of the story, accord-

296 Ibidem, p.56


292 Lefebvre 1991 [1974], p.95 297 Ibidem, p. 57
293 Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, Blackwell Publishing, London, 1991 [La Production despace, 298 Ibidem, p.61. Here Ricoeur refers to Heideggers Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) and the concepts of In-
Editions Anthropos, Paris 1974], p.42 nerzeitichkeit (within-time-ness) and Zeitlichkeit (temporality).
294 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p.83 299 Ibidem. p.64
295 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume I, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1990 300 Ibidem , p 65-66
(1984), p.3 [original in French: Temps et Rcit, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1993] 301 Ibidem, p.76

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ing to De Certeau, is to set a field for human action and to function as a bridge and frontier, we the designer should create possibilities rather than fixed patterns:
might state that the task of a narrative architecture would be to offer a spatial field that invites To permit space to become thus encoded with time, the urbanist has to design weak borders
human actions to take place, and that through this field, borders can be defined as well as rather than strong walls. . . . An architect seeking to create a building possessed on narrative
transgressed. A narrative architecture, if we follow the line to Ricoeur, does not only compose power would seek one whose forms were capable of serving many programs.305
a structure in which human action can take place, but it also includes symbolic and temporal Sennett also speaks of the necessity to create a sense of beginning. This sense of beginning has
features. The symbolic or representational dimension of architecture has been well discussed, to do with the role of time in narrative:
and it is not my intention in this work to repeat or extend this discussion.302 My focus is on the . . . time is endowed with the possibilities of the unexpected, the possibilities of change . . . In
temporal features of the architectural narrative. Can architecture, like narrative, bring togeth- a novel the beginning erases and effaces; space also comes to life in the present tense by being
er past, future and presence in a moment of architectural experience? Can architecture be used to erase and efface by acts of displacement.306
designed to give space to different temporal experiences, and simultaneously generate mem- Sennett compares character in urban space to the character in a novel, which develops
ories and evoke imaginations? Analogous to Ricoeurs second aspect of mimesis, architecture through displacements which encounter resistance.307 For Sennett, narrative space is thus a
can be seen as a mediator between these different temporal dimensions. Also, the architectur- dynamic space, in which unexpected activities can take place, and in which time manifests
al project mediates between the parts and the whole, between its details and the totality of its itself, through the experience of the present, in different dimensions. An answer to Richard
appearance. Like the narrative, it mediates between a large number of heterogeneous factors, Sennetts quest for a new design approach, which offers narrative space in which ambigu-
such as its programmatic and functional demands, structure, climate, materiality, aesthetics ity and surprise can play a part, may be provided by a number of architectural perspectives,
and so forth. And, as Ricoeur suggests for the role of a narrative, it mediates between the intui- which regard architecture as a dynamic notion, providing room for multiple narratives to
tive and the intellectual. The last aspect of Ricoeurs study of mimesis in narrative concerns unfold.
the interactivity between writer and reader. Likewise, in architecture, the participation of the
user, inhabitant or perceiver is at stake. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, it is the use, ap-
propriation and even violence taking place within architectural space that essentially produc-
es architectural experience. We should therefore investigate how the concept of narrative can 3.2.3 Narrative space: architectural perspectives
be used in architecture, allowing a more intense experience of human action, space and time.
112 113
Sociologist Richard Sennett has proposed to regard space in a narrative sense, precisely How, then, can architects take into account these aspects of transcription? How can they
because in that way issues of temporality and human action can be addressed: provide a spatial setting for multiple events and narratives to unfold? How can architecture,
Spaces can become full of time when they permit certain properties of narrative to operate in which generally speaking puts physical material in place, thus solidifying rather than gener-
everyday life. . . . The experience of [spatial] elements as narrative scenes . . . embodies human ating movement, play a part in the dynamics of city life? How can an architect define space
cultural values.303 Sennett defines narrative space as a dynamic space in which the movement and simultaneously provide possibilities for the users to co-produce? And how can tran-
of time plays a role. In narrative space, multiple stories and activities can take place, there is scription as an experimental practice help to explore the potentiality of architectural design?
room for surprise. How, then, Sennett wonders, does a planner invent ambiguity and the If transcription is an essentially dynamic notion, a dynamic definition of architecture should
possibility of surprise? . . . To create a sense of beginning, a radical change will have to occur address aspects of use and activity. Such concerns have indeed been important for a number
in the framework of urban design.304 Sennett indeed calls for a change in approach of the de- of architects, especially since the late 1960s. Around 1960, an international group of young ar-
signing disciplines, in order to arrive at narrative qualities of space: spaces that can function chitects known as Team 10, including Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van Eyck and Georges
as a field on which actions can take place, spaces that define borders and provoke transgres- Candilis, reclaimed attention for the social practices of everyday life.308 Their designs made
sions, places that offer multiple stories, various uses, change and surprise. In Sennetts view, use of studies of behavioural patterns of everyday life. Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger
302 Especially when dealing with the public sphere, the aspect of representation remains a core issue for and Danish architect and planner Jan Gehl were among those arguing for more attention to
architects. We have discussed the subject in our introduction of Architectural Positions, Architecture, Modernity
and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers, Nijmegen/Amsterdam 2009, pp. 17-45 and pp.165-169. However, our 305 Ibidem, p. 196
discussion only briefly touched upon a few aspects. The list of sources considering architectural representa- 306 Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social Life of Cities.W.W. Norton&Co., London
tion is too extensive to name here. Ricoeurs account of sign, symbol and representation has largely been 1992 [1990], p. 195-196
influenced by Roland Barthes, and Ernst Cassirer. Valuable accounts of the representation of space have been 307 Ibidem, p. 197
given by, among others, Henri Lefebvre, and the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco. 308 Architectural Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and
303 Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social Life of Cities.W.W. Norton&Co., London1992 Hans Teerds (eds.), SUN Publishers, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 38-39. For a closer discussion of this paradigm shift
[1990], p. 190 in architectural thinking, see also Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel, Team10, 1953-1981. In Search of a
304 Ibidem, p. 196 Utopia of the Present. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2005.

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be paid to the behavioural aspects in design, bringing knowledge from the fields of cogni- programmes. They search for an architecture that provokes social interactions, events, intense
tive and behavioural psychology into the architectural debate. Likewise, Christopher Alex- experiences. They are interested in time, change and instability, and consider architecture as
ander considered the relation between architectural spaces and practices of everyday life in a process rather than as a fixed object. Their work is transdisciplinary, in that they employ
his architectural theory of behavioural patterns.309 In the Netherlands, architects and urban literary references, but also explore other fields such as philosophy, the social sciences and
planners searched for new models in which the social aspect of the urban environment was cinema.
emphasized, in reaction to rationalized modern planning. Dutch architects such as Herman
Hertzberger, Piet Blom and Aldo van Eyck strived for a more social approach to housing and In his many writings, Bernard Tschumi has expressed his concern about the superficial im-
urban space. New housing areas with a strong focus on collective, pedestrian space and neigh- age-culture of contemporary architecture. According to Tschumi, architects concentrate too
bourhood structures were for example the Cul-de-Sac housing estates in the Netherlands.310 much on appearance, neglecting the role of architecture in reflecting upon and accommo-
John Habraken provided a theoretical framework with his differentiation between support dating social issues. Indeed, states Tschumi, if most of architecture has become surface,
and infill.311 In his view, architects and planners were first and foremost responsible for pro- applied decoration, superficiality, paper architecture . . . how can architecture remain a means
viding a supportive built structure, flexible enough to allow different infills by inhabitants. by which society explores new territories, develops new knowledge?314 Tschumi looked with
His was a bottom-up approach in which inhabitants would have a say in the design of their interest at postmodern experiments with linguistics and architecture, which, in his opinion,
living environment. Professor of architecture Lars Lerup was also interested in the influence remained too narrow, as they concentrated on only one aspect, thereby underestimating the
of users practices on the built environment. He has studied the interactions between the social complexity of architecture: The multiplicity of heterogeneous discourses, the constant inter-
and the physical world, stating that people are active individuals who in their approach to action between movement, sensual experience, and conceptual acrobatics.315 Without doubt,
things produce meaning. 312 Like De Certeau, he turns to the act of reading to explain how a source of inspiration must have been the explorations of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott
spatial relations can be analysed: Brown, who were among the first to leave behind the restraints of modernist architectural
Structures of meaning may be uncovered in reading. I am of course suggesting that designed dogmas and start to look for a connection of architecture with everyday life. Their Learning
objects and whole settings can be read as if they were a text. Reading the physical setting in from Las Vegas, which called attention to the imagery of popular culture, was an eye-opener for
the light of accurately observed behavior . . . is thus a technique to simulate for the reader the many architects.316 Venturis earlier book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, provided
interaction between people and their setting.313 a sharp critique of the established architecture at the time, pointing at the confusing, ambigu-
114 ous aspects of architecture as the core of the discipline.317 This focus on contradiction and 115
The interactive relationship between writer and reader, or: between architect and user/per- complexity was a welcome alternative to the stylistic dogmas that mainstream modernist ar-
ceiver has also been investigated by a number of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Peter chitecture had become associated with. Interestingly enough, Venturi does not present these
Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind, who were interested in an experimental approach to archi- themes as new; on the contrary, he uses architecture of all times to illustrate his argument.
tecture, in which the process itself plays an important role. Their work relates to the aspect of The complexity of Baroque churches is as relevant to him as Edwin Lutyens manor houses in
transcription I have called writing through. They criticize mainstream architecture for its Great Britain, as well as modern works by Le Corbusier and Aalto, in whose work he discov-
formality and its affirmative attitude concerning functional and aesthetic demands. Instead ers tensions between different geometries, between plan and section, between modern tech-
of comfort, stability and stylistic clarity, these architects set out to search for the dynamic in niques and vernacular references. The key argument for Venturi is that architecture cannot be
architecture, looking for spaces that can take up various, even contradicting programmes. reductive: it always consists of multiple layers, which can even contradict each other.
They search for the dynamic in architecture, and aim for spaces that can take up various
Venturis vision on architecture as a discipline of double meanings, of contrasts between in-
309 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, New York 1977. See also: Architectural terior and exterior, of tension between the parts and the difficult whole, provided fruitful
Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.),
insights for further architectural explorations. Alberto Perez-Gomez, when reflecting on the
SUN Publishers, Amsterdam/Nijmegen 2009, p. 114
310 For a Dutch perspective on social urban planning concepts, see: Martien de Vletter, The Critical Seventies,
Architecture and Urban Planning in the Netherlands in 1968-1982, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2004 . The publication 314 Bernard Tschumi, Six Concepts, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and DIsjunction, The MIT Press,
coincided with the exhibition Cul-de-Sacs and conservation Pits. The Critical Seventies, in the Netherlands Archi- Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, 1996, pp. 236-237, originally written as a lecture at Columbia University
tecture Institute in Rotterdam in 2004. in February 1991
311 John Habraken, De dragers en de mensen, Het einde van de massawoningbouw. Scheltema en Holkema 315 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Limits, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and DIsjunction, The MIT
, Amsterdam, 1962, English edition: Supports: an Alternate to Mass Housing. The Urban International Press , Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, 1996, p. 177
Gateshead, UK 2000 (reprint of the 1972 edition) 316 Learning from Las Vegas was first published as an article in Architectural Forum, No. 2, 1968, pp.36-42.
312 Lars Lerup, Building the Unfinished. Architecture and Human Actions, Sage publications, Beverly Hills / 317 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art Papers on Archi-
London, 1977, p.19 tecture, New York / Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago, 1966 (used version:
313 Ibidem, p.27 reprint of the second edition 1977, New York 1992).

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task of architecture to engage aspects of lived experience and time in architecture, stated that: the sensibilities and themes that literature can address.322 Literature thus offers the themes
The main concern of any generative theory of architecture is . . . to find appropriate language and sensibilities that architecture often seems to lack. Simultaneously, it offers productive
(in the form of stories) capable of modulating intended actions (projects) in view of ethical parallels between the writing of literature and the process of designing architecture. The con-
imperatives, always specific to each task at hand. The practice that emerges from such a theory cepts of narrative, perspective and character have been used in architectural projects, and
can never be an instrumental application, but rather appears as a verb, as a process that is experimental writing practices have shown new ways for experiment in architecture.
never neutral and should be valorised, a process that in fact erodes the boundaries between
the artistic disciplines concerned with space.318 The Belgian architect Wim Cuyvers has undertaken various attempts at transcribing literary
texts into architectural works. His motivation for these transcriptions derived from the ob-
Indeed, the transcriptive approach, as I call it, is without exception trans-disciplinary. This servation that architecture, other than literature, avoids addressing existential questions. In
seems self-evident, considering the context of this research, but I wish to stress this point novels, questions of life, death, decay, conflict and love are omnipresent, while architecture in
here, because precisely the concept of transcription offers the possibility to link up with other general limits itself to offering comfort. Cuyvers wonders
disciplines and use their instruments to involved lived practices in architecture. Architects why architecture should not make full use of the means at its disposal: spaces that intensify
explicitly search for connections with other fields, and not only the literary. Both Bernard confrontations, spaces that simultaneously offer contradictory insights and overviews, spaces
Tschumi and Raoul Bunschoten turn, for example, to cinema to find techniques of framing that are reflective and encourage reflection, spaces that throw light on realities, spaces that
and sequences for their design works. I will discuss the work of Tschumi in more detail in the impel and oppress, chasms and menace. Instead of this, architecture has collaborated in es-
last part of this chapter. Dutch architect Raoul Bunschoten, with his London-based practice tablishing power, in enforcing hygiene; it has helped to regulate smooth circulation and has
CHORA, defines scenarios as narratives of urban possibilities, alternative realities, alterna- installed controls and checks.323
tive practices.319 In the view of Bunschoten, scenarios can be generated by the use of literary Cuyvers architectural transcriptions of novels are comparable with the writing of a scenario
elements such as authors, actors, agents and angels. It is through interaction and conflict that for a film based on a novel. Stories are literally put in scene, character traits used to charac-
such elements can evoke new uses of space. Peter Eisenman has drawn close connections terize spaces, the relations between spaces are taken from books, aiming, by these means,
with philosophers to find new ways in architecture, while illustrating his ideas about disloca- to pursue a heightened confrontation in order to break through the economically driven
tion through examples from cinema.320 Indeed, in the work of these architects, the borders logic.324 Other methods of architectural transcription that Cuyvers has employed are the
116 between disciplines seem to merge. In this work, I have chosen to focus predominantly on the construction of literary spaces and using themes from a novel in an architectural work. He 117
role of literature as the most constituting discipline of the transcriptive approach. Literature, concludes, however, that these methods of transcribing have never been completely success-
as we stated in OASE, offers: ful they often remained too explicit. The true merit of literary inspiration for architects,
an alternative to the narrow concerns of functional and technological appropriateness that states Cuyvers, is to understand the other side; to transgress the boundaries of the discipline;
architects find themselves confronted with. Rather than explaining the world as governed by to look from the perspective of the other, the one in need rather than the architect or the
cause and effect and by measurable or predictable requirements, literary works show their mere client searching for comfort; and to offer spaces that can be appropriated. According
readers the contradictory and complicated nature of human endeavours.321 to Cuyvers, what literature has to offer is that reading becomes another writing,325 in other
words, the reader plays a role in the interpretation, even the production, of the text. In archi-
One of the fundamental differences between architecture and literature is that architecture, tecture, then, designing stops: architecture becomes a reading of space, allowing multiple
in general, is projective, forward looking, and affirmative regarding programmatic and func- interpretations, rather than a finished product; the architect offers spaces to be appropriated,
tional demands. Literature, on the contrary, is essentially questioning. It addresses existential to be used and confronted by their users.
themes regarding life, death, pain, love, grief, fear, the passage of time. Rather than comfort, it Daniel Libeskind is one of the architects who have been intrigued by experimental writing
offers confusion and contradiction. According to Wim Cuyvers, whose architectural transcrip- processes and who have explored such literary interests in their projects. He has often com-
tions were discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the real merit of using literature lays in pared architecture to language and in his projects written, drawn or built he has investi-
gated the possibilities that a literary approach has to offer to architecture.
318 Alberto Prez-Gmez, Phenomenology and virtual space-alternative tactics for architectural practice,
in OASE 58, The Visible and the Invisible, SUN publishers, Nijmegen/Amsterdam 2002, pp 35-55 322 Grafe, Havik & Maaskant, editorial OASE 70 Architecture&Literature Reflections / Imaginations, NAi
319 Raoul Bunschoten/CHORA, Urban Flotsam, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, p. 6, Wim Cuyvers, From the Dream of the Novel Turned to Stone to the Ac-
320 For example, Eisenman speaks of the different time-frames which are superimposed in David Lynch knowledgement of Public Space, OASE 70 Architecture&Literature Reflections / Imaginations, pp. 20-29
film Blue Velvet. Peter Eisenman, Architecture as a second language: the texts of between, in: Peter Eisenman, 323 Wim Cuyvers, From the Dream of the Novel Turned to Stone to the Acknowledgement of Public Space,
INSIDE OUT. Selected Writings 1963-1988, Yale University Press, New Haven/ London, 2004, p. 229. OASE 70 Architecture&Literature Reflections / Imaginations, p. 22
321 Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik, and Madeleine Maaskant, editorial OASE 70 Architecture&Literature 324 Ibidem, p. 23
Reflections / Imaginations, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, p. 6 325 Interview with Wim Cuyvers, November 4, 2005, Jan van Eyck Academy Maastricht.

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An early transcriptive project by Daniel Libeskind concerns the Chamber Works, a series Libeskinds project for the Jewish Museum in Berlin (2001) was in another way a result of his
of drawings based on themes of Heraclites, made in 1983. The ancient Greek philosopher explorations on the boundaries between architecture and literary experiment. In this project,
Heraclites (500 AD) is known for his aphorisms, the most famous of which is panta rhei: the very plan of the building came out of a narrative: the lines are a literal transcription of
everything flows. Heraclites compares the state of being with the flow of the river, which is the lines that Libeskind drew on the city map of Berlin, connecting the former residences of
unique and unrepeatable.326 Libeskinds architectural drawings can be seen as interdiscipli- Jews who had been killed in the Second World War. The interior of the museum continues
nary transcriptions: the meditations on the texts concern their appropriateness for architec- these intersecting lines in the narrow strips of windows and the line on the ceiling. On top of
ture, the interpretations are then transcribed to an architectural medium: drawing on paper. this layer, another layer of voids is projected, expressing the emptiness of the non-graspable
The drawings do not represent buildings, they are works on their own, offering connections, history. A long corridor leads to a heavy door, which opens to a cold, high space, in which the
rhythms, pause or speed, paths and spaces on paper. Another of Heraclites aphorisms, which only light comes from the tiny strip of open air high above. It is a space of power and fear, a
comes back in the work of Libeskind, is that beginning and end are connected on the same space in which different stories come together, in which the sudden cold and loneliness evoke
circle. In his 1991 text Three Lessons in Architecture, Daniel Libeskind describes the project an intense experience that unites knowing with the impossibility to understand. It can be
for a machine, which departed from this idea of a circular connection between end and argued that the transcription of the intersecting lines is too direct, too literal. However, with
beginning, explicitly draws a connection between architecture and moments of reading, re- the voids, Libeskind has created narrative spaces, which speak as much as they are silent.
membering and writing.327 Explaining his project for a handcrafted machine that addressed
these aspects of architecture, Libeskind emphasizes the need for a participatory architecture: Precisely the possibility of architecture to address the theme of absence is at the core of the
one in which the experience of the making, rather than the object itself, plays a central role. investigations of architect Peter Eisenman. If architecture is primarily presence materi-
As a theoretical project, Libeskind developed a three-fold machine, totally handcrafted in ality, brick, and mortar, states Eisenman, then otherness or secondarity would be trace, as
wood, metal and graphite and rope. It processes eight words, including spirit, being, power the presence of absence.331 Eisenman argues that aspects of otherness or absence, aspects
and idea, in a complicated machine, containing a reading, remembering and writing part. that indeed exceed the common conditions of architecture such as function and style, can
Reading is described by Libeskind as an experimental state in which the architect searches be found in textuality. A text, according to Eisenman, always refers to something other than
for a deep understanding of craftsmanship, the very process of building. With the writing of itself. This is because a text can describe an object or situation outside the text itself. Also, a
architecture, Libeskind aimed at a process to industrialise the poetics of architecture and to text, especially a literary narrative, is interpreted by the reader. Therefore, there is not only one
118 offer architecture as a sacrifice to its own possibilities of making a text.328 The idea of a writing way to read and understand a text: it is open to multiple interpretations. For Eisenman, text 119
machine also appears in Deleuze and Guattaris study of Kafka, as a machine that makes is thus dynamic and multivocal: It is not a stable object but a process, a transgressive activity
things happen.329 For his particular writing architecture machine, Libeskind refers to ex- which disperses the author as the centre, limit and guarantor if truth.332 His ideas on textual-
perimental writers such as Raymond Roussel, who has been of great influence of the Oulipo ity have largely been influenced by the philosophical discourse of deconstruction, especially
movement. Libeskind owes to Roussel the dynamic conception of the writing machine as by the contribution of Jacques Derrida,333 who sees writing as an essentially instable process. If
something unstable, linking totally different aspects in an unpredictable rationalisation of writing is a process, then a conflict arises when a text is presented as a finished object. In archi-
place, name, person.330 The machine can indeed be regarded as a transcriptive exercise in the tecture, Eisenman stresses the factor of temporality. A building, through its physical presence,
sense of writing through: an experiment concerning the process of the making. seems to be located in only one specific place and one specific time. Eisenman is interested in
bringing together different experiences of time. As Paul Ricoeur suggested in Time and Narra-
tive, a text can mediate between different temporal dimensions, and Eisenman is in search of
an architecture that can situate itself as a text between different times and places: if archi-
326 J.H. Croon, A.R.A. van Aken, De antieke beschaving in hoofdlijnen, Meulenhof Educatief, Amsterdam 1981, tecture is no longer seen as the now, but as a state between, then architecture can dislocate
p. 115; Jan Bor and Errit Petersma (eds.), De verbeelding van het denken, Contact Publishers, Amsterdam Antwerp
1995, p.18
327 Daniel Libeskind, Three Lessons in Architecture. in: Architectural Monographs No16, Daniel Libeskind. 331 Peter Eisenman, EN TERROR FIRMA. In trails of grotextes, in: Kate Nessbitt (ed.), Theorizing a New
Countersign. Academy Editions, London 1991, pp.37-61, the project Three lessons in Architecture was exhibited Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architecture Theory 1965-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York
in Modena, Italy in 1986; an excerpt of this text has also been published in Architectural Positions. Architec- 1996, p.569
ture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (eds.), SUN Publishers, 332 Peter Eisenman, Architecture as a second language: the texts of between, in: Peter Eisenman, INSIDE
Amsterdam 2009, pp.188-195 OUT. Selected Writings 1963-1988, Yale University Press, New Haven/ London, 2004, p. 227. Also published in RE:
328 Daniel Libeskind, Three Lessons in Architecture. in: Architectural Monographs No16, Daniel Libeskind. WORKING EISENMAN, Academy Editions London/ Ernst&Sohn Berlin, 1993, pp.19-23
Countersign. Academy Editions, London 1991, p. 43 333 Peter Eisenman has frequently exchanged thoughts with Jacques Derrida about language, textuality and
329 Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Literature, Routledge, New York / London 2003, pp 187-192 architecture in thelight of Derridas theory of deconstruction. Choral Work was a joint project of the philosopher
330 Daniel Libeskind, Three Lessons in Architecture. in: Architectural Monographs No16, Daniel Libeskind. and the architect. Some of the correspondence between Eisenman and Derrida has been published in : RE:
Countersign. Academy Editions, London 1991, text of project. WORKING EISENMAN, Academy Editions London/ Ernst&Sohn Berlin 1993

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not only the memory of internal time but all aspects of presence, origin, place, scale and so forces the visitor to physically encounter a sense of being lost. In this context, states Eisen-
forth.334 The concept of dislocation is important to Eisenmans quest to find an architecture man, there is no nostalgia, no memory of the past, only the living memory of the individual
beyond its common presence: an architecture that indeed mediates between past, future and experience in the monument. . . . This feeling of being lost is a disjunction in time.339 An ar-
present, that can be at once presence and absence, that leaves traces open between author and chitectural work, according to Eisenman, Cuyvers or Libeskind, does not represent an ending,
reader, that allows multiple meanings. Dislocation does not imply denying that architecture a final stage, but rather brings different temporalities together in that sense resembling the
has a place and time, that it functions and offers shelter. On the contrary, dislocating archi- narrative.
tecture in the view of Eisenman can respond to the primary needs a building has to fulfil, but
simultaneously speak of something else.335

In his design work, Eisenman has explored many ways to achieve such dislocation in archi-
tecture. His early houses (House I-VI) were experiments that questioned the common roles
of architectural elements such as walls and columns. These early houses were not conceived
with the idea of textuality in mind, but retrospectively, Eisenman sees them as part of the
same search: One can find this inclination toward fiction already operating in these houses . .
. [they] were in fact . . . fictionalizations, misreadings, creations of unreal histories.336 Later, Ei-
senman placed such aspects as the fictional and textuality at the core of his work. The project
Choral Work, carried out in 1985 together with Jacques Derrida, was an attempt to explicitly
explore the parallels between architecture and deconstructivist ideas on textuality. Based on
Derridas interest in Platos concept of chora, the hardly definable space that comes before
everything else, that gives place, a design was made for a small garden within Tschumis
Parc de la Villette. The collaboration was not successful in every respect, and was criticized for
being too blunt an interpretation of philosophical themes, which caused Derrida to distance
120 himself from further exchanges with Eisenman. In later projects, Eisenman continued to 121
make designs that deliberately allow other readings. These misreadings, as Eisenman calls
them, are provoked by traces in the design: traces of theories, of other architectural works,
or distorted narratives of the history of the site. Temporality continues to play an important
role. In the text Time Warps, written in 1999, Eisenman reflects on the issue of temporality
in architecture in relation to his design for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin
(realized in 2005).337 Instead of representing a memory that is too big to grasp, Eisenman
proposes to deal with the heavy load of memory by offering an immediate experience of the
present: it is indeed through that immediate experience that associations and memories with
other times can be evoked.338 The wide maze of concrete blocks is accessible to the visitors, but
functions as a labyrinth in which the orientation of the visitor becomes confused, despite the
orthogonality of the grid. The temporal and spatial experience of being in this concrete maze

334 Peter Eisenman, Architecture as a second language: the texts of between, in: Peter Eisenman, INSIDE
OUT. Selected Writings 1963-1988, Yale University Press, New Haven/ London, 2004, p. 229.
335 Ibidem, p.233
336 Peter Eisenman, Misreading Peter Eisenman, in: Peter Eisenman, INSIDE OUT. Selected Writings
1963-1988, Yale University Press, New Haven/ London, 2004, p. 224.
337 Peter Eisenman, Time Warps: the Monument, in: Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anytime,MIT press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1999, pp.250-257; republished in: Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds, Architectural
Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 242-247 339 Peter Eisenman, Time Warps: the Monument, in: Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anytime, MIT press,
338 See also Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds , introduction to the chapter Temporalities, Archi- Cambridge, Mass., 1999, pp.250-257; republished in: Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds, Architectural
tectural Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere , SUN Publishers, Amsterdam 2009, p. 223-225 Positions. Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers, Amsterdam 2009, p. 245

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the paradox of architectural discourse lies in the fact that it is almost impossible to theorize
3.3 architectural transcription about architecture while experiencing it. Therefore, a gap seems to exist between the ideal,
conceptual space of discourse, and the real space that is experienced. Tschumis formulation
of this paradox resonates with Lefebvres conflict between conceived space and its perceived
3.3.1 Bernard Tschumi: theoretical transcriptions and lived counterparts.342 Tschumi argues that there is a moment when the real and the ideal,
the concept and the experience, the rational and the intuitive, coincide. This moment, accord-
ing to Tschumi, is the moment of architecture, and it is found through transgression. Only
I have chosen to devote special attention to the work of architect Bernard Tschumi in illus- when architecture is balanced on a rotting point, can such a moment be experienced. With
trating what a transcriptive approach to architecture can entail. While the architects I have rot, Tschumi makes a double reference; first, he makes the comparison with erotics: indeed,
mentioned above, such as Libeskind, Eisenman, Bunschoten and Cuyvers, have indeed fre- an intense moment, when thought, intuition and sensuality can coincide, when mind and
quently used aspects of transcription in their work, Bernard Tschumi, in his written as well body merge in the same experience; second, he refers to the thin boundaries between life and
as architectural work, has applied a transcriptive approach on different levels. First, Bernard death, perfection and decay, a rotting point, when limits are transgressed. This point does
Tschumis explorations show a deep interest in the social relations that architecture can not always offer a pleasant experience, on the contrary, such moments come together with
make possible. The field of tension between architecture and the activities it may allow or emotions of confusion, fear, violence or intense affection and even evoke strong physical im-
provoke is a central theme in both his texts and his design projects. Second, Tschumis ap- pulses such as crying, running or shaking. In any case, they are moments of extreme intensity.
proach is an experimental one, continuously questioning the limits of the field of architec- This moment of architecture can very well be compared to the moment that Bachelard has
ture. He uses concepts from other disciplines such as literature and cinema in order to arrive referred to as the poetic moment, and which Ricoeur described as the power of the narra-
at new architectural perspectives. While these experiments also have a strong compositional tive: that it mediates between seemingly conflicting aspects. It is indeed the intersection of
component,340 for this argument I focus on the theoretical insights and the idea of potential- sensuous architectural experience and the awareness of its conceptual impact that defines
ity that his transcriptive approach offers. Third, in Tschumis work, the idea of interactivity Tschumis moment of architecture. The text The Pleasure of Architecture343 is also centred
between writer and reader, between the architectural design and its use, plays an important on this key moment when concept and experience merge, a moment that is given erotic sig-
role; the user of architecture is given an active role, even to the extent of violation. I will first nificance. Tschumi repeatedly comes back to this moment in different formulations, when
122 discuss these three aspects of Tschumis transcriptive approach through a close reading of a stating for example that the pleasure of architecture lies in that impossible moment when 123
number of his early theoretical texts: The Pleasure of Architecture, and Architecture and an architectural act, brought to excess, reveals both the traces of reason and the immediate
Transgression, both written in the 1970s and focusing on the extraordinary experience of ar- experience of space, or that it is precisely where concept and experience of space abruptly
chitecture when ideal and real space come together; and Violence of Architecture, written coincide, where architectural fragments collide and merge in delight, where the culture of
in the early 1980s, discussing the intense relationship between spaces and actions. Using this architecture is endlessly deconstructed and all rules are transgressed.
discussion, I intend to illustrate how Tschumi, in the early years of his practice, set an agenda
for a theory of architecture that extends beyond the mere formal or functional, and deliber- At the time The Pleasure of Architecture was written, architecture suffered, according to
ately addresses (literary) themes such as intense experience, violation, erotics, life and death. Tschumi, from a fashionable but too narrow interpretation of linguistic and semiotic theories,
After this theoretical discussion, I will draw on Tschumis attempts to make such concepts as which excluded other themes in architecture, such as programme, action, or the experience
conflict, narrative and dislocation concepts that, I argue, have a strong literary component of space. In The Pleasure of Architecture, Tschumi claims that such comparisons between
operational in his design work. architecture and language often caused a reduction of the significance of architecture, rather
than opening new perspectives. Tschumi argues that instead of the focus on the structure of
An overarching interest, present on all levels of Tschumis work, is the very experience of language, the merit of the comparison lies in the fragmented nature of language: in seeing ar-
architecture. The text Architecture and Transgression341 is centred on what Tschumi calls
the moment of architecture, a moment when the concept of space is simultaneously ex-
perienced in the physical, sensuous encounter with its spatial reality. Tschumi argues that 342 At the time of writing of The Pleasure of Architecture Tschumi had indeed read Lefebvres work. In The
Architectural Paradox in Architecture and Disjunction, pp. 26-51, of the same period, Tschumi refers explicitly
340 The compositional aspects of Tschumis approach have been widely discussed by others. For such an ap- to La Production despace, as well as to a conversation with Lefebvre in 1972. In a conversation with Enrique
preciation of the work of Bernard Tschumi see amongst others: Geoffrey Broadbent, Deconstruction: A Student Walker, Tschumi further explains his interest in Lefebvre, see: Enrique Walker (ed.), Tschumi on Architecture,
Guide, Academy Editions, London, 1997. Conversations with Enrique Walker, The Monacelli Press, New York 2006, pp. 15-16
341 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Transgression, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 343 Bernard Tschumi, The Pleasure of Architecture, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, The
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass./ London, 1996. pp. 64-78. First published in Oppositions, MIT Press, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass./ London, 1996. pp. 81-96. First published in a different form in Architectural
Cambridge Mass.,1976. Design, March 1977

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chitecture as a series of fragments that together make up an architectural reading.344 Indeed, indeed, one has to search for the most forbidden parts; where limits are perverted and pro-
an architectural experience is always composed of fragments, it is hardly ever possible to ex- hibitions are transgressed.348
perience all fragments, all bits and pieces of an architectural space at once. Such seemingly
loose fragments can melt together into the experience of the space, and in some cases, states Tschumis later text Violence of Architecture349 has also been strongly influenced by Georges
Tschumi, this collection of fragments sets in motion the operations of seduction and the Bataille and Roland Barthes. Bataille contends that erotics is intrinsically linked with taboo,
unconscious.345 Precisely such a collection of fragments is the text The Pleasure of Architec- sacrifice, death, transgression and pleasure. Violence also plays a part in the erotic experience,
ture in its form and content. While Architecture and Transgression was constructed as an as a breaking down of established patterns.350 According to Renata Hejduk, who studied the
argument in three clear parts (The Paradox, eROTicism and The Transgression), The Pleasure influence of Bataille in Tschumis early work, Bernard Tschumi indeed uses Batailles terms
of Architecture, is more associative, as if it is less bounded by the rules of writing. Or, one to establish his architectural theory, which provokes us to move beyond the expected clean
could question, is the form of the text, a list of seemingly unrelated fragments, precisely the and rational experience toward another type of experience - unexpected, visceral, sensual,
set of rules that makes it playful? Under the fragment about bondage for example, Tschumi even dirty, combining the power of the rational . . . with the sensual erotics of the irrational,
states that, though architecture is usually restricted by rules, a manipulation of such rules the particular, and the momentary.351 In Violence of Architecture, Tschumi explores the
can overcome their restrictive starting point and deliver a pleasure of playing with limits. dynamic relation between architecture and the social action that takes place within it. He
This principle is similar to those we have found in the experimental writings of the Oulipo claims that architecture does not exist without action, events and programme; echoing in this
group: the playful investigation and experimentation with rules and constraints there leads way Lefebvres statement that space is by definition social, Tschumi thus contends that it is
to intriguing forms of literature, but also to a new potential of what literature can be. Like crucial to consider the social activities that take place in space. According to Tschumi, the use
Oulipo, Tschumi uses rules and constraints in two ways: first, they are tools for architectural of space can be seen as an act of violence, as the movement of the body in a space temporarily
composition, and second, they open new potentiality on another level they help find new changes its order. Violence is not necessarily seen as aggression, but rather as a metaphor for
perspectives in architecture. the intense relationship between space and its user. The user violates space and vice versa. In
the first case, architecture is an organism engaged in constant intercourse with users, whose
The Pleasure of Architecture can be seen as an architectural response to Roland Barthes bodies rush against the carefully established rules of architectural thought, while space in-
famous series of reflections on the act of writing in his book The Pleasure of the Text.346 Barthes flicts violence on its users in the case of, for example, steep and dangerous staircases, those
124 original text sums up, in alphabetic order, a number of themes that he associates with the act corridors consciously made too narrow for crowds.352 This is not to say that violence of space 125
of writing. Barthes text attaches to the act of writing an aura of erotic pleasure, in which the is negative, quite the contrary, the way in which people affect space and space affects people
word jouissance has the double meaning of playfulness and orgasmic pleasure. Tschumis text can be a form of pleasure just as violence, pleasure and erotics are all part of the same
is also a series of loosely related fragments, which aims to set in motion not only the thoughts intense experience in Bataille. In this text, the active role of the user of space is thus brought
of the reader, but also sensations of his or her own experience. It is both playful and serious, to the fore. It is through his or her activities and movements, to the events which gather a
aiming to shine another light on the act of architectural design, and to provoke the thought crowd of people in space, that architectural limits are transgressed and that new uses and
of architecture as a possibly erotic experience. The mask, for instance, is presented as an experiences arise.
erotic metaphor: a mask seduces through disguise. Architecture, states Tschumi, makes use
of multiple masks, of which the faade might be said to be the most literal one. The faade Tschumis approach can thus be characterized as a continuous attempt to create conditions
hides or instead unveils what lies behind, but likewise, concepts or technical features can be for a dynamic architecture, focused on the relationship between space, experience and social
seen as masks. The point is that architecture can be read in multiple ways, and that one of the activity. I would argue that this implies, next to a re-thinking of the limits of architecture, also
pleasures of architecture is to simultaneously veil and unveil, simulate and dissimulate. . . . a radical re-thinking of the concept of place. The reach of this transcriptive approach does
by its very presence [the mask] says that, in the background, there is something else.347 In the not remain limited to the architectural object as an autonomous, isolated entity. Its position
fragment about excess, themes from the transgression text reappear. Again, Tschumi states 348 Ibidem, p.91
that it is in the conflict of irreconcilable extremes, such as sensual pleasure and the pleasure 349 Bernard Tschumi, Violence of Architecture, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, The MIT
of order that the real pleasure of the act of architecture lies. In order to find such moments, Press, Cambridge, Mass./ London, 1996. pp. 120-137. First published in Artforum, September 1981.
350 Georges Bataille, Erotism: death and sensuality, quoted by Renata Hejduk, Death Becomes Her: transgres-
sion, decays and eROTicism in Bernard Tschumis early writings and projects, in: The Journal of Architecture,
344 Ibidem p. 95 Volume 12, Issue 4, September 2007, pp. 393-404
345 Ibidem, p. 96 351 Renata Hejduk, Death Becomes Her: transgression, decays and eROTicism in Bernard Tschumis early
346 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, Hill and Wang, New York 1975 [Le plaisir du texte, ditions du writings and projects, in: The Journal of Architecture, Volume 12, Issue 4, September 2007, pp. 393-404
Seuil, Paris, 1973] 352 Bernard Tschumi, Violence of Architecture, in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, The MIT
347 Tschumi, The Pleasure of Architecture, pp. 90-91 Press, Cambridge, Mass./ London, 1996. pp. 124

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in the city plays a part in the possibility to engage such themes as social activities, movement,
programme and conflict in architectural design. Although Tschumi does not depart from 3.3.2 Architecture and event: The Manhattan Transcripts356
such ideas as the phenomenological understanding of place, place is an important aspect
in his work in that it becomes a platform for experience and action, rather than just the site
where architecture happens to be located. Like Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi is interest- Bernard Tschumi has thus explored how architectural spaces need events and movements
ed in the possibilities for dislocation in architecture, in the sense of creating conditions for in order to achieve a genuine architectural experience. Instead of aiming for a fixed image,
actions to take place. In The Fate of Place, Edward S. Casey devotes special attention to Bernard Tschumi argues that the city only then becomes interesting when spaces, movements and
Tschumis ideas of dislocation, defining his work as an attempt to re-conceptualize the notion events meet, and even contradict each other. The following will be a close reading of some
of place in a contemporary way as an unstable concept, rather than as fixed location: . . . a new of Tschumis design works in relation to the theoretical concepts that he has elaborated upon
sense of place that has more to do with motion than with stability, dislocation than location, in the texts that have been collected in Architecture & Disjunction. I will discuss Tschumis tran-
point than containing surface. 353 For Casey, Tschumis work offers an architectural response scriptive approach to architecture in his use of literary concepts such as narrative, conflict
to the dynamics, instability, conflicts and contradictions of place that are addressed in the and dislocation. By a close reading of The Manhattan Transcripts and Parc de la Villette I will
theories of for example Derrida. Tschumis projects show how architectural concepts such bring to the fore how Tschumis interdisciplinary investigations have lead to an architectural
as the event can help in generating an architecture that gives place for public interaction: . . approach that deliberately takes into account the inherently public nature of architecture
. in the case of architecture an event is not only something that takes place; it also gives place and its role as something that offers a place to public events.357 In The Manhattan Transcripts,
(donne lieu), gives room for things to happen. . . . Architecture, then, does not occupy a place Tschumi experiments with the relation between spaces, movements and events.
but provides place . . . and in so doing occurs as an event that there is.354 A close reading of this work will show how transciptive techniques such as narrative, se-
quences and experiments with the characters and spaces in the story result in an alternative
In this way, place becomes a key concept, while being simultaneously denied; the idea of theory of architecture. I will then briefly discuss the winning competition entry for Parc de la
dis-location seems a contradictio in terminis. However, it can be argued that exactly this opera- Villette in Paris, which became Tschumis first built result of these theoretical investigations.
tion of in-stabilizing place brings us to a true understanding of place in relation to the social Finally, I will characterize Tschumis approach as a continuous attempt to create conditions
activity: for encounters conditions for space, movement and event to meet.
126 So conceived, states Casey, a building spaces itself out in place. Not because place is what a 127
building is in, that is, its bare locus, but because place is what a building expands into . . . The In The Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumis concern as to how architectural spaces need events
subject spaces out in the very building that, in the course of its own espacement, makes place and movements in order to achieve a genuine architectural experience is addressed in archi-
for the event. In doing so, building and subject alike let that event take place; they bring it to tectural terms. In this project, Tschumi illustrates that it is necessary to mobilize a new set of
implacement, find place for it.355 In Tschumis approach, opening place and transgressing instruments to study the rhetorical relation between the social and the built. By means of a
rather than imposing limits, place becomes challenging, provoking conflict, pleasure, inter- notational system borrowed from cinema, The Transcripts try to offer a different reading of ar-
action and events. And it is through the subject, user or inhabitant, in other words, through chitecture, in which space, movement and events are independent, yet stand in a new relation
social practice, that such place can be activated. to one another.358 The Manhattan Transcripts combine architectural drawings, abstractions of
newspaper photographs, maps of parks and streets, sections of towers and the movement of
people and objects in order to offer an alternative reading of the relation between the social
and the built in Manhattan. In four episodes (the park, the street, the tower/fall, and the block)
a story about a murder is told. Whereas the first part starts off as a linear narrative in which
the story is told in a seemingly rational manner, the following episodes eventually lead to
more and more conflicting situations, dislocations and confrontations between architectural
spaces, the programmes and events taking place and the movement of the people involved.

356 Some fragments of the following passages have in an earlier form been published in OASE: Tom
Avermaete and Klaske Havik, Accommodating the Public Sphere. Bernard Tschumis Dynamic Definition of
353 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place, A Philosophical History, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Architecture,in OASE#77 Into The Open. Accommodating the Public, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2008, pp.43-57
Angeles / London, 1998 (1997), p.317 357 Tschumi, Thames and Hudson 2003, p. 111
354 Ibidem, pp. 313-314 358 Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, Academy Editions, London 1994, p.7 (originally published
355 Ibidem, p. 315 in 1981 by Architectural Design, London)

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In the first chapter, each combination of drawings and pictures challenges the reader/viewer
to imagine what exactly could have happened. In this first part, a linear narrative is suggested,
telling the story of a crime that took place in the park. However, when the chapter proceeds,
the architectural drawings start to transform: they are mirrored, the position of objects on
the plan changes. By the end of part 1, arriving at the 24th frame, the plan has changed into
elevation. The images show possible relationships between place (architectural plan, or a dis-
tortion of the plan), the movements (shown as trajectories of protagonists by dotted lines and
arrows on the plan), and the events (represented by fragments of newspaper photographs,
suggestion rather than precisely depicting an event). As Tschumi states in the accompany-
ing text, it is precisely the combination of these different bits of information, that offers an
insight: Only together do they define the architectural space of The Park.359 In the second
chapter of The Manhattan Transcripts, called The Street, the continuity is spatial, rather than
temporal. The chapter depicts 42nd Street in New York, starting at the Hudson River, and, after
passing 24 borders, ending at the East River. The starting point of notation of this chapter is
the street plan upon which strips are projected. Each border strip consist of respectively a 1 a+b
photographical fragment, an architectural collage or diagram, an in-between zone of move-
ment through the street, indicating a route with dotted lines, and below, closing the strip, a
scheme or architectural plan. The chapter is about crossing borders between the different
worlds that all exist along 42nd Street: MT2 does not describe these worlds, but the borders
that describe them, Each border becomes space with the events it contains, with the move-
ments that transgress it.360 Chapter 3, The Tower explores different programmes, such as
the asylum, the prison, the home, the office and the hotel, in combination with the typology
128 of the block. Photographs and collages are no longer part of the notational system. Instead, 129
each page shows a sequence of five architectural drawings, mostly axonometric projections,
showing, within the typical space of a block, a number of rooms along a corridor. Tschumi ex-
plains how this sequence modifies them through the introduction (transgression) of move-
ment patterns.361 Through the event of the fall of a person, unrelated to the mentioned pro-
grammes, the sequence transforms into a vertical one, expressing the movement of the fall.
Thus, this chapter brings together various programmes with the relatively neutral space of
the block, and with an occurring event. Here, Tschumis position becomes clear. The spaces,
programmes and events are seemingly unrelated, but they do influence each other in the
development of the narrative. Instead of aiming for a fixed image, Tschumi argues that archi- 2
tecture only then becomes interesting when spaces, movements and events meet, and even
contradict each other. As Tschumi states: The Manhattan Transcripts aim to maintain these
contradictions in a dynamic manner, in a new reciprocity and conflict.362 This aspect of con-
flict and confrontation is brought to the extreme in the fourth and last chapter of The Man-
hattan Transcripts, The Block. Here, the apparently neutral spaces of the yards are confronted
with unlikely programmes. Dancers, football players, tightrope walkers and soldiers invade
the spaces. First, photographic fragments of spaces and characters are presented separately,

359 Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, Academy Editions, London 1994, p. 8 [originally published
in 1981 by Architectural Design]
360 Ibidem. 1 a+b Bernard Tschumi, Pages from the first chapter of The Manhattan Transcripts: The Park.
361 Ibidem, p.11 2 MT2. The Block. Second chapter of The Manhattan Transcripts.
362 Ibidem, p. 9 Scans from The Manhattan Transcripts 1994, p. 30

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while choreographic diagrams show the movements of the characters. Then, the movements
start distorting the architectural perspective, the choreographic notations become spatial ax-
onometic projections, and start interfering with the architectural drawings. Finally, the pho-
tographs of characters are superimposed (pictures of dancers and acrobats melt together with
soldiers), and divided in fragments, the combined characters invade the spatial fields. Indeed,
spaces, movements and the events caused by the characters melt together in a dynamic con-
frontation of fragments.

Thus, in The Manhattan Transcripts, the narrative is not neutral, it is subject to change. As Tschumi
puts it, the last chapter exhausts the narrative it deconstructs programs in the same way that
it deconstructs forms and movements; then it adds, repeats, accumulated, inserts, fades in, dis-
torts, disjoins, always dealing with discrete, discontinuous moments, for each frame can always
be exchanged for another.363
In this way, seemingly impossible combinations of spaces and events render interesting new
kinds of spatial experiences, unexpected actors and programmes change place or create dif- 3
ferent places. The Manhattan Transcripts can be considered as a plea to regard the essence of
the city as the complex confrontation of spaces with different movements and events. This
dynamic conception of the city resonates strongly with contemporary definitions of the public
sphere such as that of Richard Sennet: an essential component of public space: the overlay of
function in a single territory, which creates complexities of experience on that turf. 364
Transcription, in The Manhattan Transcripts project, does not imply literally translating a piece
of literature into a piece of architecture, rather, it offers a way to investigate an urban space by
130 means of narrative. In the recently published interviews with Enrique Walker,365 Tschumi re- 131
flects on his architectural practice and the way he has tried to make his conceptual approach
operational. About narrative, Tschumi states:
I think it is important to stress that architectural narrative should never be addressed in a 4 a+b
linear fashion. As we experience or perceive them, the series of fragments that make up ar-
chitecture are constantly re-arranging in different way, so that there is no single linear path,
even though one of the favorite means of architectural organization is linear. The structure of
narrative is not populated by a single story, but by many stories, or rather, by different stories
for different people. Architecture never conveys a singular story.366
Indeed, the Manhattan Transcripts tell a story, but it is open to interpretation, and it can be read
in different ways. In that sense, the reader (or viewer) of the project participates in construct-
ing the story.

The project for Parc de la Villette in Paris allowed Bernard Tschumi to bring the concepts
developed in his theoretical explorations and experimental projects, such as The Manhattan
Transcripts, into practice. The competition brief for the Parc de la Villette in 1982 was already

363 Ibidem, p.10


364 Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, Penguin books, London 2002 p. 297 (originally published in 1974)
3 MT3. The Tower. Third chapter of The Manhattan Transcripts. Scan from The Manhattan
365 Enrique Walker (ed.), Tschumi on Architecture, Conversations with Enrique Walker, The Monacelli Press, New
York 2006 Transcripts 1994, p. V (appendix Color plates)
366 Quote from an interview with Marco de Michaelis about intertextuality. In: Tschumi, Giovanni 4 a+b MT4. The Block. Fourth chapter of The Manhattan Transcripts. Scan from The Manhattan
Damiani (ed.), Thames&Hudson, 2003, p. 23 Transcripts 1994, p. VII, p. IX (appendix Color Plates)

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an invitation for new approaches regarding the park as a public urban space for interac-
tion. Programme, rather than form, was a dominant issue in the competition brief. It had
to become an urban park for the 21st century with a complexity of public functions: edu-
cation, leisure, gardens, culture. For Tschumi, the competition was an opportunity to bring
his dynamic definition of architecture into practice: creating a dynamic, unstable place that
allows architectural narratives to unfold through events. Tschumis design for Parc de la Vil-
lette is radically different from the traditional, picturesque idea of a park as a part of nature
in the city.367 The design, characterized by a super-imposition of three systems (lines, points
and surfaces), resulted in a new kind of public space, in which encounters and events are ac-
tively generated. The folies, red architectural objects spread through the park, work as what
Tschumi calls common denominators, providing public recognition and leaving space for
events. It has to be noted that with the folie, Tschumi plays a word game: the English Folly,
for the separate object, becomes the French folie which means madness. Here, the reference
to Barthes and Batailles aspects of pleasure and erotics come again to the fore. Tschumis
architecture has to provoke unexpected connections: violence of space, erotics, madness.368 As
Tschumi himself noted:
La Villette promotes programmatic instability, functional Folie. . . . the endless combinatory
possibilities of the folies give way to a multiplicity of impressions. . . . La Villette is a term in
constant production, in continuous change; its meaning is never fixed but is always deferred,
differed, rendered irresolute by the multiplicity of meanings it inscribes.369 This multiplic-
ity of meanings also means that the narrative is subject to change; that it is constantly re-
interpreted and re-written by the visitors of the park. Like many European architects, I have
132 been one of those visitors. I recall my first impressions of Parc de la Villette, when I visited it 5 133
shortly after completion, after my first year of study at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft. In
Architecture and Transgression, Tschumi describes how his visit, as a student in 1965, to the
dilapidated near-ruin of Le Corbusiers Villa Savoy revealed for him the essence of architec-
ture. For Tschumi, the state of the building revealed the power of decay, the vulnerability of
architecture, the naked essence of the project. The experience I had as a student in Parc de la
Villette was not about the project coming of age the brand new park evoked in me another
essence: that architecture is not merely about form, that it is not simply readable at first sight.
What I encountered was not a clear concept, not a form that could easily be drawn, but a vast
space, bound together by the denominators of the follies and by the activities taking place. Of
this first visit, I do not recall the exact route I took, I do not remember the precise shapes and
forms. What I recall is the atmosphere of possibility.

367 See for a concise discussion of this paradigm shift in park architecture the polemic text of Dutch
landscape architect Adriaan Geuze: Accelerating Darwinin: Gerrit Smienk (ed.) Nederlandse Landschapsarchi-
tectuur. Tussen traditie en experiment. Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam 1993, p. 16-21
368 In the article Madness and the combinative, written in 1984, when the project of Parc de la Villette in
Paris was at the core of Tschumis practice, deals with bringing together the unexpected and the aleatory, the
pragmatic and the passionate, and would turn into reason what was formerly excluded from the realm of
architecture because it seemed to belong to the realm of the irrational. in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and
Disjunction, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass./ London, 1996. pp. 172-189
369 Bernard Tschumi, Abstract Mediation and Strategy, in: Architecture and Disjunction, MIT press,
Cambridge Mass./ London 1996, p.201 5 Scheme of superimposed layers, Parc de la Villette, Paris.

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Also in more recent projects, Tschumis ideas about architectural experience have developed
into operational design concepts, which all have in common that they actively generate move-
ments and events. The school of architecture in Marne-la Valle, for example, is organized
around an un-programmed, event-oriented large central space . . . activated by the density
around it . . . A social and cultural space.370 In cultural centre Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, the
most important space is the left-over space between the existing buildings and the enormous
roof placed above them. This in-between space is where all infrastructure is organized and
where users and visitors meet.371 A similar operation is carried out in the Rouen Concert Hall.
Here, a circulation space has been created between the inner and outer envelopes of the
building. Through vectors, the movement of flows of people is activated inside this double
envelope.372 A common objective in all of Tschumis projects is thus to create conditions for
6+7
encounters. The superimposition in Parc de La Villette, the oversized circulation spaces of
Fresnoy and Rouen, the combining and intersecting of unexpected different routes and pro-
grammes all cause movement in space, thereby generating events, they are building-gener-
ators of events. As much through their programs as their spatial potential, they accelerate a
cultural or social transformation that is already in progress.373 Bernard Tschumis theoretical
investigations both his writings inspired by Barthes and Bataille, and the theoretical project
The Manhattan Transcripts have thus lead him to an approach in architectural practice that is
not focused on form, but on the possibilities of space to generate extraordinary experiences,
to transgress limits of expectation and to allow for encounters between people and space.
As such this approach, deriving from theoretical transcriptions of literary and philosophical
texts to texts addressing architecture, as well as from experiments at the limits of the field of
134 architecture such as The Manhattan Transcripts, indeed answers to my view of a transcrip- 135
tive approach to architecture. First, Tschumi shows a deep interest in the social aspects of 8

architecture. He states that there is no architecture without everyday life, movement, and
action; . . . it is the most dynamic aspects of their disjunctions that suggest a new definition of
architecture.374 Tschumis definition of architecture is paired with a specific perspective on
the public sphere and the role of architecture, and throughout his work, the quest to arrive
at a more socially inscribed and socially productive practice375 can be recognized. His quest
resonates with Henri Lefebvres ideas on space as socially produced and connected to struc-

370 Architecture in/of Motion, NAI Publishers Rotterdam, 1997, p.57


371 For Tschumis reflections on this project, see for example the interview Le Fresnoy with Enrique Walker,
in: Enrique Walker (ed.), Tschumi on architecture, conversation with Enrique Walker, The Monacelli Press, New 9
York 2006, pp.115-122. See also Tschumi, Le Fresnoy. Architecture In / Between, The Monacelli Press, New York
1994
372 See for example Bernard Tschumi, Vectors and Envelopes, in: Bernard Tschumi and Irene Cheng, The
State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century, The Monacelli Press New York 2003, pp. 64-65. See also
Enrique Walker (ed.), Tschumi on architecture, conversation with Enrique Walker, The Monacelli Press, New York
2006, pp.144-145.
373 Giovanni Damiani (ed.), Tschumi, Thames&Hudson, London 2003, p. 49
374 Bernard Tschumi, introduction to: Architecture and Disjunction, MIT press, Cambridge Mass./ London 6+7 Cultural Center Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, concept sketch and photo.
1996, p. 23. 8 School for Architecture in Marne-la Valle. Large, event-oriented central space.
375 Bernard Tschumi, Urban Pleasures and the Moral Good, in: Assemblage 25, MIT Press 1995, p. 9 9 Concert Hall in Rouen; space in between the innner and outer envelop of the building.

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tures of power.376 Tschumis approach to architecture is a dynamic one: according to Tschumi,
space becomes meaningful only through the movements and events caused by people using
these spaces in both expected and unexpected ways. His architecture thus provides possibili-
ties for various programmes, activities and social interactions. Second, Tschumis approach
also answers to the meaning of transcription as an experimental process. For Tschumi, con-
cepts such as dislocation and disjunction, which are inspired by deconstructivist dis-
course, are more than tools for formal experimentation; on the contrary, he has used such
concepts explicitly in connection to the awareness that architecture has, first and foremost, a
social function. His writing through in the process of architecture consists of a consequent
re-questioning of limits that have often been taken for granted in architectural practice. The
programme, for instance, is a concept that Tschumi addresses in a detailed way, arriving at
new insights about the relationship between space, programme and architectural experience.
Third, in Tschumis work the idea of the other version is clearly present, not only through his
elaboration on concepts from various disciplines and the use of instruments such as narra-
tive or sequence from literature and film. I have argued that the idea of the other version 1
also has to do with the participatory role of the reader/user, and it is precisely this aspect of
participation, and even active violation by the user of architecture, that comes to the fore in
Tschumis work. Altogether, the three aspects of transcription in the work of Tschumi result
in a rich approach to architecture, which indeed centres on the social, which tries through
transdisciplinary experimentation to establish productive interaction between theoretical
concepts and the experience of architectural space. As such, Tschumis transcriptive explo-
rations can be seen as an agenda for architecture to confront, to provoke, to challenge activity
136 and emotion. 137

3.3.3. Transcription in architectural education


2

The discussion of Bernard Tschumis written and architectural work has shown how tran-
scriptive notions can be operational in establishing an architectural practice that addresses
the social, the experimental and the experiential aspects of architecture. For Tschumi, these
insights have always developed in close relation to explorations carried out in architectural
education. For example, the exercises that Tschumi carried out with students at the AA School
of Architecture in London in the 1970s explored the possibilities of using literary techniques
3
in order to generate architectural concepts. By looking at architectural notions from a literary
perspective, he intended to reach a richer, interdisciplinary dialectic between the verbal and
the visual. In these courses, Tschumi conducted a search for analogies between the ways that
authors influence the structure of stories through the careful manipulation of vocabulary
and grammar, and the ways that architects engage through architectural form with the social. 1, 2+3 The Border Conditions studio in Tallinn. Sander Laheij projected a trip on central Tallinn. By
Using the literary works of Calvino, Joyce or Poe as a starting point, texts were used as sources mapping the intensity of control, advertising, traffic and tourism, he investigated the mani-
to provide programmes and events from which the architectural work could develop. The festation of borders between different social and spatial areas. On the verge of the historical
centre and a dilapidated workers area, Laheij proposed an urban connector, consisting of a
376 Especially Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit la ville [The Right to the City] and La Production de lespace, 1974 [The
Production of Space, Blackwell, London 1991] , would be of great importance for Tschumi. public transport platform and a public square, roofed by a hotel.

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notion of narrative, the unfolding of events in literary context, was transported to architec-
ture: To what extent, Tschumi wondered, could literary narrative shed light on the organi-
zation of events in buildings, whether called use, functions, activities or programmes?377
Such explorations with students, in which spaces were confronted with unlikely programmes
or vice versa, in which narrative structures would lay a basis for architectural design strate-
gies, may well have stimulated not only the students thinking about architecture, but Tschu-
mis as well. The AA exercises may have sown the seeds for The Manhattan Transcript project,
or for the investigation of such concepts as the event in the further work of Bernard Tschumi.

For students and architects alike, exercises departing from a transcriptive approach can be
very helpful in developing a broader view of architecture, exploring the limits of the field
4a
rather than remaining within the constraints of the general, often rather linear, processes of
architectural design. In the following paragraphs I will illustrate by means of a number of
educational examples how literary concepts such as narrative, temporality, perspective and
character can be used in architectural research and design. Perspective, for instance, implies
the reading of a site or situation from a specific point of view or direction, for example from
the point of view of a character. Forcing oneself to look from the perspective of another person,
a student can discover other features than when limited to his or her own field of reference.
Temporality implies taking into account the timeframe in which events happen. Places and
buildings change through time and through use. The concept of temporality can thus encour-
age researchers and designers to consider possible changes that might occur in time, as well
as imagine the experience of a site or design under different temporal circumstances, such as
138 seasons and times of the day. Narrative is a concept that brings together space, time and event 139
and as such can help seeing an architectural project in the light of the events that it may allow 4b

or conflict with.

In the early 1990s, a number of students at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft sought to arrive
at architectural statements through the close reading of novels. The graduation project of
Michiel Riedijk and Juliette Bekkering from 1989 for example, is an attempt to reconstruct the
journey of Odysseus in a series of architectural objects. The project presents a narrative of a
24-hour-long boat trip on the Lago Maggiore. The narrative of Homers Odysseus provided the
brief for the architectural project. In the project, each adventure of Odysseus presents another
theme of sensory perception, each of which is transcribed into an architectural design.378
Belgian architect Wim Cuyvers used his personal attempts to put the spatial imagination of
the writer into a physically built space by constructing the spaces that were described in
novels,379 or to use themes from a novel in an architectural work as the basis for student 4c

377 Bernard Tschumi, Space and Events, in: Architecture and Disjunction, MIT press, Cambridge Mass./
London 1996, p. 146 [Original publication in Themes III: the Discourse of Events, Architectural Association, 4 a,b+c Tallinn Border Conditions: project by Max Rink. Starting from the analysis of urban activity
London 1983] and experienced friction along of a tramline trough the northern housing quarters of Tallinn,
378 Michiel Riedijk and Juliette Bekkering, in: OASE #29/30 Sprekende Architectuur [Telling Architecture],
the project explored the social segregation in Tallinn. A border condition was identified at
SUN Publishers, Nijmegen, 1991, p.69; reviewed by Arthur Wortman in Voyage Architectural. Een Odyssee
voor de Archiprix, ARCHIS 3/91, Bohn Stafleu van Loghum, Houten 1991, pp. 13-15 Balti Jaam, the railway station at the verge of the old city walls and the dilapidated housing
379 Wim Cuyvers, From the Dream of the Novel Turned to Stone to the Acknowledgement of Public Space, area Kalamaja. For this Border Zone, a new market hall was designed, taking up various
OASE #70 Architecture&Literature Reflections / Imaginations, NAi Publishers Rotterdam 2006, p. 229 scales of commercial activities, for neighbourhood groups to participate.

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exercises he conducted, in which indeed the deep emotional experience evoked by a certain
text was meant to be transcribed to architecture. However, as Cuyvers correctly noticed, such
literal transcriptions might not reveal the essence of what literature has to offer. Instead, as we
learned from Cuyvers, what literary sensibilities really have to offer [is] a grasp of the non-
lingual, erotic and universal, allowing oneself to be vulnerable, and receptive.380 In recent
courses with students in architecture, he found another way of using literary inspiration to
offer alternative views on architecture. In literature, Cuyvers argued, the character of the poor,
the oppressed, the one in need, is often the perspective from which a story is told. In order to
experience the city from this other perspective, Cuyvers encouraged students in a project for
Paris, for example, to spend an amount of time as a homeless person, without any money to
spend and without a place to stay. In this way, the city was given a totally different meaning,
one would look for shelter in urban space, experience the quest for daily needs to survive life
on the street, and become aware of the social differences existing in the city. In other projects,
he looked with students for such places of need, essentially public places, as Cuyvers argues,
places that are not owned, that are appropriated by the characters in need. He found such
places in cities turned inside-out, cities which have been shot, shot in the back such as Saraje-
vo, or abandoned cities such as Belgrade or Tirana, or neglected parts of cities such as Brussels
or The Hague, cities . . . where the public and the private mingle endlessly, unashamedly.381
He argued that such visits were no longer about making and designing spaces, but about
reading them through the eyes of the character in need. In such extreme public spaces, among
garbage, temporary shelters or hiding spaces, one is exposed to the essence of space as some- 5a
thing not only dealing with life but just as well with decay, need, death. And there we come
140 back to the notions that, like Bernard Tschumi , Cuyvers borrowed from Bataille, notions that 141
literature addresses more often than architecture. This, for Cuyvers, is probably the most im-
portant lesson to be learnt from Bataille, from literature, and the most important lesson for
students to learn: the capability of reading space, or more precisely public space, as existential
space, as space of being, not only offering comfort and hygiene but rather being open to all
aspects of life and death.382

In the Border Conditions diploma studio in Delft, many such marginal places have been
visited with students, and an approach of reading and rewriting has been at stake in many
of the projects383. Jennifer Bloomers idea of the challenging roles of the reader might indeed
5b
also apply to the reading of such a complex assemblage of bits and pieces as a city.384 The city,
as a spatial construct, is regarded and actively confronted as a complex identity, which can
be explored, engaged with and reacted to. Wim Cuyvers was involved as a tutor of the group
380 Christoph Grafe, Klaske Havik and Madeleine Maaskant, Architecture&Literature. Reflections / Imagina-
tions, editorial OASE# 70, NAi Publishers Rotterdam 2006, discussing Cuyvers position, pp. 3-7
381 Wim Cuyvers, Architect + Pedagoog / Pedagogie + Architectuur in Wim Cuyvers, Tekst over Tekst, Stroom
Den Haag 2005, pp.171, fragment freely translated from Dutch by KMH
382 Interview with Wim Cuyvers, November 4, 2005, Jan van Eyck Academy Maastricht.
383 For an extensive overview of the Border Conditions diploma studio, see Marc Schoonderbeek (ed.),
5 a+b Niels Tilanus focused on the spatial practices in the urban wasteland of Tallinns coastal zone.
Border Conditions, Architectura&Natura, Amsterdam, 2010. For the discussion of the Tallinn group, I have used
fragments of my contribution in this book: Klaske Havik, Readings on the Edge. Border Conditions Studio Map depicting the phenomenon of Finnish day-tourists looking for cheap alcohol. Niels
Tallinn 2004-2005, pp. 164-170 Tilanus proposed to interfere with the monumental Linnahall, adding hotel and conference
384 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text, 1993 functions.

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who visited Marseille in 2004-2005. In 2005, a group under guidance of Oscar Rommens and
Sebas Veldhuisen visited the cities of Ceuta and Gibraltar, on opposite sides of the Strait of
Gibraltar. In Ceuta, the presence of migrants from Northern Africa, hoping to pass through
the fences to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, surely made the students aware of such ques-
tions of need, while the British pensioners in Gibraltar offered the opposite perspective of
the ones who have. I have myself guided a Border Conditions group to Helsinki and Tallinn
in 2004-2005. Especially in Tallinn, the perspective of the needy came clearly to the fore in
the neglected neighbourhoods of the former Russian immigrants. Sharp contrasts between
such places and the shiny state of the touristic medieval city and the new high-rise business
centre were read and reacted to by the students. The Tallinn project began with an attempt to
grasp the city by moving through it at different speeds: by car, on foot, stopping intuitively at
fascinating spaces and objects, searching for identities that could be revealed by maps, photo-
graphs and writings that could offer readings of a specific moment in time, identifying traces
6a
and starting points that might offer relevant material for future scenarios. As the students
described their approach:
The possibility of picking up a line in the dark and trying to trace it wherever it may lead, is
possibly the only way of not losing oneself and thus trying to find a poetic notion that has any
depth or substance. Through methods of diagramming, drawing, juxtaposing . . . we each tried
to find an entrance, a fissure in a seemingly unending limitless body.385 The most challenging
sites that came out of this quest were the edges, where different time periods, sociopolitical
systems and spatial structures collide. Such edges were sometimes very sharp and narrow,
with strong visual contrasts; sometimes they consisted of larger stretches of urban wasteland.
142 Following the analysis of Tallinns border conditions, the students proposed designs that 143
attract public life to the left-over spaces, the unused edges between different urban entities, by
combining, for example, public facilities with housing. In other proposed interventions the
edges, where the forces of commercialization and neglect converge, were seen as opportuni-
ties for exchange. By superimposing a range of programmatic impulses while leaving spaces
open for marginal use and appropriation, a diversity of spaces, goods and social exchange at 6b
different levels was encouraged. Other projects offered flexible structures or series of events,
to generate social activities in otherwise desolate areas.

Also in less extreme cases, this notion of perspective, seeing through the eyes of another char-
acter, proves a very valuable exercise for students. With the City&Literature course, a seminar
for master students I have initiated at Delft University Of Technology, I ask students to de-
scribe their site or their design from the point of view of another person, someone in a hurry,
in need, at an inconvenient time or in uncomfortable circumstances. How would he or she
approach and experience the site, what would be the encounter with the architecture, and
with other people present at the same time and place? The change of perspective often helps
students to discover characteristics of the site that they did not see with their architects eye,
or to shine another light on their designs. Especially aspects of routing, orientation and ma- 6 a+b Transvaal Transcript project. Students of the Public Realm diploma studio in 2009 investigat-
teriality come to the fore in such exercises as experienced differently by different groups. In ing the interactions between different user groups by means of scripts, each depicting a day in
the life of a character presenting another lifestyle. Image showing screenshots of the movies,
385 From the students afterword in the msc3 publication TALLINN, Border Conditions Studio, Delft University scheme of the use of public and private spaces during the day of one of the characters;
of Technology 2004-2005. scheme of possible encounters of characters on site.

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the Public Realm diploma studio of 2009, the site of investigation was a multiethnic neigh-
bourhood in The Hague called Transvaal. The group set out to explore the meaning of public
realm in the light of urban redevelopments in the area, which is currently in the process of
radical restructuring. Many old housing blocks that no longer meet contemporary housing
requirements have been replaced by a diversity of new housing facilities. However, during
this process, inhabitants and local professionals such as the local housing corporation Stae-
dion are confronted with a number of problems such as social segregation, un-safety and the
difficulties of generating a good use of public and collective spaces.
The students were asked to address such themes and to develop programmes and strategies
to meet Transvaals social, political and economic problems and needs in the twenty-first
century. The architectural design assignments resulting from these programmes and strate-
gies could involve the public realm on several levels. On the one hand, they may accommo-
date social, cultural and educational institutions that can function on the level of the city
region as a whole. On the other, solutions could be generated for local problems, such as the
lack of cultural and spatial exchange. With the help of housing corporation Staedion, the
students were provided with facilities to work on site: a house in the middle of Transvaal was
at their disposal for the first months of the research period, so that the students had the pos-
sibility to work on site at all times and thus become temporarily part of its social network. This 7a
allowed the students to carry out interviews with local people, and revealed how, for example,
informal economy had a large influence on peoples lives in the neighbourhood. One group
asked a large number of inhabitants to each draw a map of what they saw as their neigh-
bourhood, and transcribed this information to a map depicting the psychological distances
144 and important denominators of the area. A small group of students used the changing per- 145
spective exercise throughout their Transvaal Transcript project.386 Using the demographic
information about the area, they identified four types of users based on different lifestyles. For
each of these user types they created a character: Youssef, an 8-year-old Turkish boy; Fatima, a
Hindu mother of three children; Mies, a Dutch widow who lived most of her life in Transvaal;
and Stanley, a young man with a Surinam background, who lives in Transvaal but commutes
every day to his work elsewhere in the city. For each person they made a movie, depicting
the activities during a 24-hour period. When would the character be in a public, and when 7b
in a private place, which routes would he or she take, which public functions (library, food
market, shop, park) would be visited by them, and at which times of the day? The routes
were expressed in maps and timeline diagrams, and then the diagrams of the four characters
were combined. Were there any moments and places where they would meet one another?
Which overlaps were present and which areas or times of the day seemed out of use? A next
step was to project a number of different programmes onto a few key sites in the area, and
then to redraw the diagrams. By comparing the superimpositions of diagrams for various
programmes and sites, the students arrived at combinations of spaces and programmes that
could have a genuine effect on the diagrams: they would increase the use of space, attract dif-
ferent user types and generate more chances for social encounters. For the design stage of the
project, each student in this group chose a combination of site and programme(s) to further
386 The user types based on lifestyles were derived from a diagram developed by The Smart Agent Company.
The project Transvaal Transcript was carried out by the following students: Katayoun Mashoudi, Randy 7 a+b Proposals for urban and architectural interventions based on the Transcript exercise. Chain of
Zeegers, Pieter Vermeer and Ren Kroondijk Events by Randy Zeegers, Urban connector by Ren Kroondijk.

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elaborate. In one proposal the tramline, currently dividing Transvaal from the neighbouring
quarter, served as a point of departure to develop a chain of events. By placing a variety of
public functions along this public transport vein, it would become a connector rather than a
barrier. The tram would then function as a spine, an organizing element, along which activi-
ties could take place 24 hours a day, which would increase safety by means of liveliness and
social control. One of the architectural assignments was to design a tram station with a centre
for pop music, hereby combining a programme for a specific group (the large group of youths
in Transvaal) with a more general programme attracting different user groups. Another
project proposed a public underpass to cross a traffic junction, placing public attractors such
as shops and a theatre along this new pedestrian route.

8
The last transcriptive project I would like to discuss in this chapter is the diploma project
carried out by Laura Theng in the Explore-Lab studio in 2007. Rather than on the social
aspects of transcription, Theng concentrated on the instruments that literature has to offer.
From a reading of five novels, among which were Danielewskis House of Leaves and Calvinos
If on a Winters Night a Traveller . . ., she distilled a large number of literary concepts which,
she argued, could be valuable in architecture. Such concepts included for instance dialogue,
narrative, structure and perspective. The presence of such concepts in architecture was then
tested by an analysis of five architectural projects. The projects and books all had in common
that an aspect of movement was at stake; all projects were public transport stations. This was a
deliberate choice, as Theng has in mind to arrive at an assignment in which the experience of
space could be combined with the movement of large numbers of different people, and with
146 the possibility of various events taking place. The starting point for the design, however, was 147
not an existing site or programme. To fully use the possibilities that literature had to offer, the
context for Thengs design had to be a fictional one. She wrote a short story about a character
travelling by train, and asked ten people from different fields and backgrounds to continue
the story from the moment of arrival. What would the station be like? Would there be a crowd
of people or would it be an abandoned place? Would wind and rain be noticeable on the plat-
forms, or would the traveller look for shadow? What would be the impressions of the traveller,
and what would be the first actions he or she would undertake? The ten stories she received
provided her with a wide scope of imaginations, all related to the experience of arriving at
the fictive train station. From these stories she developed intuitive models, expressing aspects
such as perspective, mass, materiality, shelter, speed, distance and contrast.
A fictional city was drawn, to which the train station would give access. The brief for the station
was complemented by secondary functions such as a small hotel and shops, and also the
public space in the direct vicinity of the station was part of the assignment. The design dealt
strongly with the physical experience of space, strong contrasts between the various materials,
between direct sunlight and shadow, openness and enclosure. The station became both liter-
9
ally and metaphorically a place of passage: indeed, as Grillner and Hughes claimed in their
discussion on passages in architecture and literature,387 taking the reader through space and
through narratives, allowing encounters and unexpected experiences, as well as new insights.
Such passages were the glass bridges crossing the station hall high above the heads of the
8 Study models Laura Theng
387 Op. Cit. note 226. 9 Diploma project Architecture & Literature Laura Theng: fragment of matrix literary concepts

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arriving passengers, and the underground passage strangely leading to the hotel entrance.
Some hidden niches were provided in the thick walls to sit, rest or hide places that enhance
the public sphere as a place of need. Architectural details and sights generate different narra-
tives, confrontations and multiple perspectives of different characters coming together. With
her project, Laura Theng has illustrated how literary themes can serve not only as valuable
perspectives from which to look at architecture in literature and vice versa, but also as op-
erational tools in design. If one would look back at Thengs research matrix and apply the
themes to study her station design, it is clearly visible that literary themes such as dialogue,
narrative and perspective have been transcribed to gain a role in architectural design. The
perspectives of the first ten stories provided the perceptual themes in the first models; the
dialogue between the building and its users, the ones who arrive and the ones who depart, the
designer and the user, has resulted in the meandering spatial structure of the plan, offering 10
both passages and niches; the narratives are multiple: narratives of passage from the plat-
forms, through the building, to the city and back, narratives of fragile other worlds through
the bridges, narratives of possible events in the spaces which allow a multiple interpretation.

Indeed, my interest in this chapter Transcription was not in understanding transcription as


a direct translation of literature to architecture, but instead in opening a new perspective
to the use of literary themes in architectural research and design. What I have attempted to
investigate in this chapter is the potential that lies within the experimental transgression of
disciplinary boundaries of architecture and literature, in the hope of arriving at an architec-
tural approach that is more focused on the social than on the formal, allows for experiment
148 concerning architectural experience, and takes into account the role of the user (or reader) in 149
the production of space. As in the previous chapter, I began with the question of definition
from the perspective of literature what kind of literature addresses issues of social behav-
iour in space, or, by extension, makes deliberate use of confrontations between space and
activities? Which literary writers have sought to experiment within their discipline, and in
which way did they deal with the reciprocal relationship between the writer and the user?
In the second part of the chapter, I have shown why such issues are relevant to architects, by
elaborating on the critique of theorists such as Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, that
architectural discourse has often failed to accurately address questions of social practices. By
discussing the arguments of De Certeau and Paul Ricoeur, I have brought literary narrative to
the fore as an instrument that could provide a link to social spatial practices in architectural
research and design. In the last part of the chapter, I have discussed how architects have used
a transcriptive approach in their work. Following their explorations, and specifically those 11
of Bernard Tschumi, I have intended to show that transcription indeed offers not only theo-
retical, but also operational concepts that can be applied to contemporary questions of social
space. Such concepts, as I have shown in the discussion of educational projects, have to do
with the ability to construct multiple narratives, and to allow confrontations between spaces,
users and events. To conclude, reviewing the theoretical and architectural positions discussed
in this chapter, I propose that it is predominantly in public space that literary qualities can
be found, and achieved. Rather than in private buildings, it is in the design of public urban
spaces that architecture has a task to confront, to raise questions, to generate narratives, to
evoke wonder and interaction. 10+11 Impressions of the design of the station hall, Laura Theng

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4.1 prescription
4 PRESCRIPTION 4.1.1 Writing before: speculation and critique

To cover the world, to cross it in every direction, will only ever be to know a few square meters of it . . . and
with these, the sense of the worlds concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible of something clear and
closer to us: of the world . . . as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of
writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.388

Geography, the study of places, is presented here by Georges Perec as a form of writing. Indeed,
geo-graphy translates literally as earth-writing, and it has been defined as writing about the
world, writing worlds or writing with worlds.389 The remark that we, ourselves, are the
authors of the worlds we live in, is particularly true for those involved in the design and plan-
ning of our built environment. Designers, in fact, do not only write the world they live in, but
rather pre-write a future world. Pre-scription can be translated as to write before, indeed to
outline the contours of a not yet existing spatial reality this is, to imagine a future reality.
Indeed, it takes imagination to think about how existing spatial realities may evolve in time,
and how a design can give direction to this evolution. Designing, then, understood as pre-
scribing urban or architectural futures, is by definition an act of imagination, in which both
150 reality and chance take part. Each artistic world, be it in literature, painting or architecture, 151
is at least partly imaginary, and partly based on reality. Artistic prescription should thus by
no means be understood as a recipe of which the effect is already known on the contrary,
precisely the unknown character of a future world is at stake here. In the following paragraphs I
will highlight two literary themes connected to the writing of new worlds: the delicate balance
between reality and imagination, and the possibility of taking a critical position through pre-
scription. First, I will discuss how literary futures are also critical views on the present. Then,
I will elaborate on the delicate connection between the existing reality and the imaginative
future by discussing literary positions searching the borders between real and imagined: sur-
realism and magic realism. While in surrealism the imagination is leading in artistic worlds
of simultaneity and discontinuity, magic realism uncovers marvelous aspects of real places.

A well-known literary prescription in which architecture plays a crucial role in the writers
account of a future reality is Paul Scheerbarts Glasarchitektur, written in 1914.390 Scheerbart
was fascinated by the possibilities of technology at the dawn of modernity during the early

388 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, Penguin Classics, London 2008, pp. 78-79 [Espces d espace, Editions
Galile, Paris 1974]
389 See for a more extensive discussion on geography and writing: Pivi Kymlinen, Geographies in writing
(dissertation), Nordia, Finland 2005, especially pp. 30-35
390 Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur, 1914, read in Dutch translation by Herman van Bergeijk and Kees
Vollemans: Glasarchitectuur, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2005. English translation: Paul Scheerbart, Glass
Architecture, Praeger Publishers, New York and Washington, 1972

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years of the twentieth century. He envisioned a world in which traditional building materials rational and the intuitive are represented by two different characters, but they could also be
such as brick and wood would make way completely for the transparency and reflection of two parallel spatial and temporal dimensions. Written in 1948, George Orwells novel Nineteen
architecture in glass and steel. In 111 small chapters, he prescribes this future world of glass, Eighty-Four presents a doom scenario of a society subject to the most severe system of absolute
which in his eyes would be paradise on earth: The surface of the earth would change entirely . . . It control. The book describes the future Britain (Oceania) of 1984, in which Party members,
would seem like the earth is dressed in decoration of brilliants and enamel. That divinity is absolutely working in giant buildings, all wearing the same uniforms, stand under continuous control
incredible!391 of cameras and Party propaganda, meant to be deprived from any sign of individuality or
His prescriptions include technological ones, such as ideas on aspects of heating, construction human emotions. In this new world, the world after the Revolution, the past is continuously
or fire safety, but also atmospherical ones, envisioning new images of cities full of glass, like rewritten, so that the Party is and has always been right. Meanwhile, some remnants exist of
a new kind of Venice, palaces of glass reflected in the water, floating on foundations of rein- the old world of the people living in poor and dilapidated areas of London a world in which
forced concrete. Such a floating city, in his view, would also be flexible: Naturally, the buildings people are still attached to memories and emotions.
can again and again be recomposed and slide in and out of one another, so that every floating city can This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the most
look differently each day.392 populous of the provinces of Oceania. . . . Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century
As an architecture historian and translator of Scheerbarts Glasarchitektur, Herman van houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their
Bergeijk argues that Scheerbarts world of glass architecture is an astonishing one, in which roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? . . . The Ministry of Truth
beauty made possible by modern technology prevails. The transparency of glass and its possi- . . . was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of
bilities in terms of reflection, light and colour, are imagined to offer an intensive experience of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. . . . The Ministry of
space, characterized by a sense of freedom and infinity. Scheerbarts literary world is not only Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifica-
meant to enrich the experiential world of the reader, but it is also programmatic, aiming tions below.396
to set an agenda for new architecture.393 According to Van Bergeijk, Scheerbarts world-view
has to do with the incredible possibilities of the future, in which technology leads to another Apart from a vision of the future, this novel is also a critique on specific aspects of exist-
world, in which everything is different, a world that offers amazing new experiences of space, ing reality in 1948. Orwells selective use of elements of society in this case the increasing
a world in which temporality and space are key notions.394 amount of control in society, is exaggerated in such a way that it is still recognizable and
152 imaginable. The effect is made stronger by placing the images of the new world in contrast 153
Whereas Scheerbart presents a lyrical view of a future world, other authors have combined with the envisioned decline of the existing reality of Londons nineteenth-century quarters.
their spatial and temporal imagination of a future world with a critique on existing society. The suspense in this novel is achieved by precisely this act of selection of known elements
By definition, a writer is selective in the world he presents to his readers, the selection of ele- depicting a horrifying future that is not totally unimaginable. Indeed, parts of Orwells world,
ments that the writer chooses to address is in itself already a critical position towards the exist- such as the high amount of surveillance cameras in public spaces have become reality, some
ing reality. Thus, the creation of an imaginary world is also an interpretation of the existing 30 years after the year that was still a distant future at the time the book was published.
one. The writer establishes this critical stance by means of selection: by highlighting specific Whereas Orwells critical spatial imaginations depict a possible future world, those of Franz
aspects and neglecting others, by formulating comments and speculations. Selection, then, is Kafka, such as the village in The Castle, rather recall images of traditional spaces, as the pro-
also a critical tool; by focusing only on certain aspects of reality, even enlarging them, one can tagonist K. recognizes upon his arrival in the village. Here, it is not the spaces themselves, but
give a critical account of society. In many novels, a scenario of a future world is constructed on the psychological constraints embedded in the spaces and the actions of their inhabitants
the basis of the authors interpretations of reality. In the novel Blokken (Blocks), for example, that offer a speculation on a society ruled by bureaucracy. The novel describes the frustrating
Dutch writer Ferdinand Bordewijk presented a scenario of a future world in a genuine archi- attempts to reach a destiny that is in sight, while the path towards it is hindered by invisible
tectural prescription.395 The totalitarian world in Blokken knows only angles of 90 degrees, any obstacles. The spatial description of K.s arrival in the village already hints at the impossibility
curved shape that might remind one of nature is banned from the ideally constructed world. of hem ever reaching his goal:
Here, the right angle represents the rationality of the future world, the reign of rationality So he resumed his walk, but the way proved long. For the street he was in, the main street of the village,
over intuition. A similar topic is presented in a number of other literary futures. Often, the did not lead up to the Castle hill, it only made towards it and then, as if deliberately, turned aside,
and though it did not lead away from the Castle, it got no nearer to it either. At every turn K. expected
391 Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitectuur, 2005 [1914], p. 28 (translation from Dutch KMH) the road to double back to the Castle, and only because of this expectation did he go on; he was flatly
392 Ibidem, p. 68 (translation from Dutch KMH)
unwilling, tired as he was, to leave the street, and he was also amazed at the length of the village, which
393 Herman van Bergeijk, Paul Scheerbart, fantast tussen fronten [visionary between frontiers], afterword in the
Dutch edition: Glasarchitectuur, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2005, pp. 122-139
394 Herman van Bergeijk ibidem, p.127, 131
395 F. Bordewijk, Blokken; Knorrende Beesten; Bint, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Den Haag 1985 [1931] 396 George Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1965 [1949], pp. 6-7

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seemed to have no end; again and again the same little houses, and frost-bound window-panes and of several lives lived at once.400 Indeed, in the world of a child, simultaneity and the possi-
snow and the entire absence of human beings . . .397 bility of multiple perspectives are only natural, while in the later stages of life reason tends
to disqualify such connections. The state of relaxation that the mind reaches in dreams or
K. never reaches the castle of his destiny, though it is known and can be seen from the village revery401 could also produce a similar flow of images, unhindered by reason. In the first Mani-
in which his stay becomes an endless dealing with bureaucracies. In this selection of one festo of Surrealism, written in 1924, Andr Breton holds a plea to abandon the restrictions of
aspect of modern urban society, the novel indeed presents a sharp critique. reason in order to discover the productive capacity of the mind. The interest in that which lies
Likewise, the novels of contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq can be read as beyond the real (sur-real) does not necessarily imply a negation of the real. Rather, it aims for
cynical critiques on contemporary society, by offering scenarios of a possible future situation. a resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into
His descriptions are scary as they are sometimes only exaggerations of existing practices, or a kind of absolute reality, a surreality.402 Indeed, like in poetry or in architectural experience,
practices easily imaginable in a near future. In The Possibility of an Island, for example, the as I have argued in the previous chapters,403 there is a moment of experience in which seem-
protagonist buys a luxurious home on the Spanish coast.398 The colonization of these areas, ingly contradictory notions come together. Breton describes this point, which can be seen as
with a focus on leisure, hedonism and sex, is a recognizable phenomenon, currently taking the motivating force in the activities of the surrealists,404 as a certain point of the mind at
place. The novel describes the end of humanity the twenty-first-century culture of super- which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and present, the communicable and the
ficiality, hedonism, leisure and sex is brought to the extreme, leading to the end of culture, incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.405
the end of a public realm, the end of civilization. A small part of mankind remains, back
to live in naive, prehistoric conditions, while another part has started in the late twentieth The coming together of two contradictory elements, according to Breton, manifests itself
century to provide a new, clean and safe future, without physical constraints. The protagonist, as a spark, a sudden moment, when the partial absence of reason allows for unexpected
Daniel, is one of the lucky few who has been reproduced in order to survive over generations connections. Reason is only necessary for taking note of, and appreciating, the luminous
in every time a new and improved body. The 25th version of Daniel only vaguely remembers phenomenon.406 Even though Breton suggested that everything is valid when it comes to
the human emotions of his predecessor but of course, as the reader well understands, longs obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations,407 the surrealists did develop
for them, despite the perfection of his totally programmed identity. The vast territory of Spain methods to reach this state of mind, to rule out rational thought in creative processes, and
has been almost completely changed through desertification, the cities, formerly centres of to allow for these sparks of poetic imagination. One method, especially suitable for literary
154 high culture, are merely ruins. In one of his essays, Houellebecq explains that he sees litera- production, is automatic writing, or, more precise, pure psychic automatism, which simply 155
ture as a way to reveal the weak spots in society. His task, as a writer, is to put his finger on the implies that one starts writing without hesitation, without stopping to read, control or judge
wounds and press with force.399 the just written. The aim is to let the images occur spontaneously, by random association, like
a flow from a spring that one need only go search for fairly deep down within oneself, a flow
whose course one cannot direct, for if one does it is sure to dry up immediately.408 Another
method used in surrealist writing is the narrated dream indeed a way to capture a similar
4.1.2 Writing beyond: imagining situations subconscious flow of thought without editing. As a third surrealist technique, correspond-
400 Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), in Andr Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by
Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 2010 (1969), p. 3
While the before mentioned writers offer critical accounts of reality by their prescriptions of 401 The work of Sigmund Freud on dream analysis, was therefore looked upon by the Surrealists with
possible future worlds, surrealist writers attempted to search beyond reality to fully employ high interest. Daydreaming, or revery, is also a core notion in Bachelards Poetics of Space. See also chapter
the power of imagination. The surrealists critiqued the realistic approach in society in general Description.
402 Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), in Andr Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by
and in literature specifically. They searched for alternatives for the in their eyes boring, factual
Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 2010 (1969), p. 14
descriptions of literature at the time, and were inspired by the irrational connections of child- 403 See the discussion of the moment of poetic experience as defined by Bachelard, in the chapter
hood thoughts, as for a child the absence of any known restrictions allow him the perspective Description, and the discussion of Tschumis architectural moment of transgression in the chapter Tran-
scription.
397 Franz Kafka, Das Schloss (1926), English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir: The Castle in: Franz Kafka, 404 Andr Breton,Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930), in: Andr Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism,
The Complete Novels Vintage Classics, London 1999, p. 282 [first published in English in this translation in 1930, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 2010
Secher&Warburg]. (1969), p. 124
398 Michel Houellebeqc, La possibilit dune le, Fayard, Paris, 2005, read in Dutch translation as De mogelijk- 405 Andr Breton,Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930), ibidem, p. 123
heid van een eiland, De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam 2005 406 Andr Breton,Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), ibidem, p. 37
399 Michel Houellebecq, Leven, lijden, schrijven/ methode, Voetnoot, Antwerp 2003 [original in French as 407 Ibidem, p. 41
Rester vivant - mthode, Editions de la Diffrence, 1991] 408 Andr Breton,On Surrealism in its Living Works (1953), in ibidem, p. 298

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ences between two elements are often expressed in metaphors. Another technique that has Even if the book presents the most detailed descriptions of the passage, in fact the passage,
been used by surrealist writers is that of random assemblage, which exists in bringing together as Aragon admits in the text, is an excuse for daydreaming, for letting the images flow the
fragments of text, for example from newspaper headlines, fragments of poems and so forth.409 space itself has become an oneiric passage, a method of freeing myself of certain inhibitions,
a means of obtaining access to a hitherto forbidden realm.415
By these means, even the most recognizable spatial descriptions obtain a certain awkward- In surrealist literature, the organization of space and time is thus fragmented: events take
ness. The surrealist novel Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon, for example, starts off to describe the place simultaneously, and spatial images overlap without any causal relation.
Passage de lOpra in Paris by means of evoking images of the spatial pattern of the arcade,
revealing details of the shops and bars inside, of the hotel and the lodging house, and at some
point lets these seemingly objective descriptions evolve into flares of oneiric imagination:
My attention was suddenly attracted by a sort of humming noise which seemed to be coming from the 4.1.3 Writing between: reality and imagination
direction of the cane shop, and I was astonished to see that its window was bathed in a greenish, almost
submarine light, the source of which remained invisible. . . . I recognized the sound: it was the same voice
of the seashells that has never ceased to amaze poets and film-stars. The whole ocean in the Passage de Surrealism was not limited to literary writing alone. In Paris, the centre of surrealism in the
lOpra. The canes floated gently like seaweed. I had still not recovered from my enchantment when I 1930s, writers such as Breton, Eluard and Aragon stood in close contact with sculptors and
noticed that a human form was swimming among the various levels of the window display. Although painters, such as Belgian painter Magritte and Spanish artist Salvador Dal. This interdiscipli-
not quite as tall as an average woman, she did not in the least give the impression of being a dwarf. Her nary interest resulted in a productive cross-fertilization of their works.416 Though most known
smallness seemed, rather, to derive from distance, and yet the apparition was moving about just behind for his painting, Dal had a strong interest in other disciplines, and extended his activities to
the windowpane. Her hair floated behind her, her fingers occasionally clutched at one of the canes.410 writing, making objects and designing theatre stage sets. Because Dal translated the methods
of surrealist literature to the production of visual images, I will discuss his position in more
The further the reader gets into the pages of Paris Peasant, the more the realistic descriptions detail. In his early autobiography, Dal criticizes the cold and rational architecture of interna-
merge with interruptions, fragments of newspapers, images of daydreaming, absurd dia- tional modernism: Everything was on the same level, everything was becoming uniform as
logues and metaphors. Even the Passage de lOpra itself is at some point presented as a big it became internationalized.417 Against this homogeneity and rationality of modernism, Dal
156 glass coffin,411 and the shops of hairdressers or the bath houses give way to reflections about placed the irrational and the multiple. For Dal, nothing was what it seemed at first sight. He 157
dangerous daydreams and the powerful contrast of a sense of intimacy in the very center referred frequently to the double images that landscapes can bear, as rocks can look like faces
of a public place.412 The merging of imagination and reality, which Breton claimed was the or animals. It was these perceptions of natural phenomena, with their capacity of stirring
ultimate goal of surrealism, indeed takes place within this book, within the detailed descrip- the imagination, that became a model for Dals own thinking: relativistic, changing at the
tion of the urban space of the passage: slightest displacement in the space of the spirit, becoming constantly their own opposite, dis-
At the level of the printer who prints cards while you wait, just beyond the little flight of steps leading sembling, ambivalent, hypocritical, disguised, vague and concrete, without dream, without
down to the Rue Chaptal . . . in the farthest reaches of the two kinds of daylight which pity the reality mist of wonder, measurable, observable, physical, objective, material and hard as granite.418
of the outside world against the subjectivism of the passage, let us pause for a moment . . . let us pause As Dal was well aware of the techniques of the surrealist writers, it is interesting to see how
in this strange zone where all is distraction, distraction of attention as well as inattention, so as to ex- he interpreted such techniques as narrated dreams and automatic writing into methods that
perience this vertigo. The double illusion which holds us here is confronted with the desire for absolute could lead to images, objects and spaces. Dal describes, for example, his surrealist objects
knowledge. Here the two great movements of the spirit are equivalent and all interpretations of the world as:
have lost their power over me. Two universes begin to fade at their point of contact . . .413 the irrational objects, the object with a symbolic function . . . absolutely useless from the prac-
. . . Reverie imposes its presence, unaided. Here, surrealism resumes all its right. . . . Images flutter down tical and rational point of view, created wholly for the purpose of materializing in a fetishistic
like confetti. Images, images everywhere.414

415 Ibidem, p. 88
409 This technique became most known through the related Dada poets. 416 This influence reached also outside Paris, and extended over the next decades. The Dutch magazine
410 Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Simon Watson Taylor, Exact Exchange, Boston 1994 (1971), Barbarber (1958-1972), for example by the authors J.Bernlef, G. Brandts and K.Schippers, was highly inspired
[original version: Louis Aragon, Le Paysan de Paris, Editions Gallimard, Paris 1926], pp.21-22 by surrealists works, and presented ready-made poetry from advertisements, user manuals and errant lists,
411 Ibidem, p. 34 phonetically birdsounds.
412 Ibidem, p. 53 417 Salvador Dal, The Secret Life of Salvador Dal [Vie Secrte de Salvador Dal], Dover Publication INc. , New
413 Ibidem, p. 47 York 1993 [Dial Press, New York 1942], p.285
414 Ibidem, p. 81 418 Ibidem, p.305

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way, with the maximum of tangible reality, ideas and fantasies having a delirious character.419 a key notion in the literary production in Latin American countries since the 1950s. Indeed,
However, Dal did not see such objects as totally subjective. On the contrary, he looked for a writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Gara Mrquez and Isabel Allende
rational, methodical way of using his delirious ideas, and searched for the esthetic hier- succeeded in expressing the magic in the reality of Latin American places and cultures. The
archization of irrational imagination.420 depictions of the marvellous real as encountered in their books are generally related to spatial
The critical-paranoiac interpretation of the images that involuntary strike my percep- settings: a house or a village is often the focal point of a large number of extraordinary events.
tion, or the fortuitous events that occur in the course of my days, or the so frequent and so The history of the Buenda family in Gara Mrquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude can also
violent phenomena of objective hazard that cast enigmatic rays of light over the most in- be read as a history of place. All events in the narrative are centred on the patio of the family
significant of my acts the interpretation of all of this, I repeat, is nothing other than the house, in the fictive village of Macondo. As such, the novel combines evocative descriptions of
interpretative reading, which is capable of giving an objective coherence to the signs, omens, the nineteenth-century Latin-American town (the heat of the Caribbean climate, the colonial
avatars, divinations, presentiments and superstitions which are the very sustenance of all architecture, the dust in the backstreets, the threats of storms, diseases, heat, civil war, the
personal magic.421 animals and carriages), with marvellous histories and symbols. Particularly interesting is the
role of time in this novel: though the narrative of the hundred years of family history seems to
With the paranoid critical method, Dal introduced an approach that exceeded literary be ordered chronologically, there are several occasions when time detaches itself from a linear
writing, and that, instead of focusing only on the unconscious production of images, also order. This is shown by the dead, who remain present in the house and are able to communi-
offered a key to the interpretation of real and surreal events. By extension, it can be produc- cate with some family members; by the small room in which it is always a Monday in March,
tive on a larger scale of urban and architectural thought as well. Rem Koolhaas interpreted and which seems untouched by the decay and dust of the passing of time; by the strong simi-
Dals paranoid critical method in his book Delirious New York, and has made use of it in his larities between events and characters in such a way that they seem to repeat themselves
architectural work. This will be further explored in the last part of the chapter. in time. Towards the end of the novel, the mystery of the events of the Buendas is found to
Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier took part in the group of surrealist writers and artists in Paris be written in the ancient manuscripts of a gypsy who witnessed the early years of the house:
in the 1930s. On his return to Latin America, he discovered that the marvellous situations Aureliano had never been more lucid in any act of his life as when he forgot about his dead ones and
that the surrealists were so eagerly trying to construct were already present in the reality of the pain of his dead ones and nailed up the doors and windows again with Fernandas crossed boards
Latin America. Latin American countries, with their abundant nature and their complex his- so as not to be disturbed by any temptations of the world, for he knew then that his fate was written in
158 tories characterized by simultaneity and discontinuity, were full of marvel. The marvellous, Melquades parchments. He found them intact among the prehistoric plants and steaming puddles 159
then, is something to be found rather than to be constructed: and luminous insects that had removed all trace of mans passage on earth from the room, and he did
The marvelous begins to be unmistakably marvelous when it arises from an unexpected not have the calmness to bring them out into the light, but right there, standing, without the slightest
alteration of reality (the miracle), from a privileged revelation of reality, an unaccustomed difficulty, as if they had been written in Spanish and were being read under the dazzling splendour of
insight that is singularly favored by the unexpected richness of reality or an amplification of high noon, he began to decipher them aloud. It was the history of the family, written by Melquades,
the scale and categories of reality perceived with particular intensity by virtue of an exaltation down to the most trivial details, one hundred years ahead of time. . . . Melquades had not put events in
of the spirit that leads it to a kind of extreme state.422 the order of mans conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes, in such a way
that they coexisted in one instant.425
Carpentier thus called upon his fellow Latin American writers to use the surrealist methods of
automatic writing and narrating dreams, to look for the marvellous in reality: It is our duty While Marquezs history is a fictional one, beyond it is a sharp observation of real life in
to depict this world, we must uncover and interpret it ourselves. Our reality will appear new northern Colombia. This type of literary construction in South-American literature is gener-
to our eyes.423 The term Marvelous Real, which Carpentier introduced in 1949,424 has remained ally named Magic Realism, a term first used for a new kind of figurative painting,426 which
aimed to unveil the magic aspect of reality. The magic realism of Latin American literature
419 Ibidem, p.312
420 Ibidem, p.378 also reverberated in Europe. The descriptions of Antwerps harbour by Belgian writer Hubert
421 Salvador Dal, The Secret Life of Salvador Dal [Vie Secrte de Salvador Dal], Dover Publication INc. , New
York 1993 [Dial Press, New York 1942], p.370 425 Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Cien aos de soledad, Editorial sudamericanos, Buenos Aires, 1967, English
422 Alejo Carpentier, On the Marvelous Real in America (1949), published in: Lois Parkinson Zamora and translation by Carlos Fuentes: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Everymans Library, Cambell Publishers, London
Wendy B. Faris, Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Duke University Press, Durham 1995, p.p. 85-86 1995, p.414 [first published in English by Harper&Row, New York 1970]
423 Alejo Carpentier, Baroque and the Marvelous Real, lecture held in Caracas, 1975, published in: Lois 426 The German art critic Franz Roh coined the term in 1925 for a return in painting to the delight of reality
Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Duke University Press, after the abstraction of expressionism. In painting, the term has been frequently used ever since. In Dutch
Durham 1995, p. 106 painting, for example, painters such as Carel Willink and Charley Toorop have been very successful as magic
424 Alejo Carpentier, On the Marvelous Real in America (1949), in: Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. realists. Franz Roh, Magic Realism: post-expressionism (1925), in: Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B.
Faris, Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Duke University Press, Durham 1995, p. 76-88 Faris, Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Duke University Press, Durham 1995, pp. 15-32

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Lampo,427 for example, are saturated with myth. More recently, Angolan-Portuguese writer erations of temporality such as simultaneity, chance and indeterminacy can also play a pro-
Jos Eduardo Agualusa has offered valuable descriptions of existing places, precisely by re- ductive role in architectural thought and design.
vealing the connection to the magical and the absurd, for example in the tale of a dealer in
memories in Angola.428 In his novel My Fathers Wives, the protagonists travel through African In the following paragraphs I wish to shine a light on some architectural precedents of a pre-
cities and landscapes, which seem to be as much alive as the many characters featured in the scriptive approach to developing new situations. Especially around the 1960s, a number of
novel.429 avant-garde groups of artists and architects experimented with prescriptive themes by devel-
oping radical scenarios for urban and architectural futures, or by letting aspects of chance
The heightened reality perception that is so characteristic of magic realistic literature can be and indeterminacy play a role in their designs.431 My aim is not to idealize these groups, but
valuable to architects. Researcher Ricardo Castro correctly states that marvelous-real, first rather to highlight some of the guiding techniques they borrowed from literature in creating
conceived as a strategy to describe existing reality, would also seem appropriate to construct imaginative scenarios and critiques. Even though their scenarios were hardly ever realistic,
it.430 The awareness that places can contain multiple layers of time, history and events, is and they never succeeded (or were not even interested) in turning them into spatial realities,
useful for those meant to construct new accounts of these places by means of design. their critical and playful investigations served a great role in stirring the debate and still do
today. In her study on 1960s architecture, researcher Lara Schrijver states that an important
contribution of groups such as the Situationists International and Archigram was to construct
a critical moment, the discovery of a technique or an aesthetic that can help revise our cul-
4.2 writing places tural perceptions.432 Such techniques were the drive and detournement that the situationists
employed in their explorations of the city, or the pop-art aesthetics that the members of Ar-
chigram discovered as a means to express their optimism about new technologies for future
4.2.1 Architectural imaginations and critiques living environments. For my argument, I will focus on the literary approach these groups
applied. An example of the use of literary techniques to construct both an urban critique and
new scenarios for urban situations was provided in the late 1950s by the Situationiste Interna-
For this argument about the prescriptive possibilities for architecture, I have first drawn tionale group, an interdisciplinary fellowship, originating among the literary group Lettrists
160 on the possibilities in literature to critically address reality, to search beyond reality, and to International and a number of artist collectives such as the International Movement for an 161
explore the balance between real and imagined. Imaginist Bauhaus.433 Their work was rooted in a critique on the state of urbanism at the time;
In the next part of this chapter, I will discuss a number of architectural prescriptions, and they found modernist urban planning too formalistic. They argued that due to such rational
show how architects and urban designers have positioned themselves vis--vis this balance planning tools as the zoning of functions, the dynamics of urban life was lost, and with it the
between the real and the imagined in urban critique and design. The construction of a new richness of human encounters, the possibilities to wander around in the city, guided by im-
situation demands that the designer develop a particular view on time and space. Like the agination and chance. In their writings, the situationists expressed their critiques and offered
author in literary prescription, the designer also takes a selective position, which establishes directions as to how life should be brought back into the city. Their texts were polemic, clearly
the intellectual frame through which the work is constructed.I will therefore draw on the expressing their critical stance towards urban planning, such as Constants text Another City,
notion of chronotope, the spatiotemporal frame that writers employ as a selective mechanism Another Life. About the new, concrete housing neighbourhoods of the time, Constant wrote:
in constructing their literary world-view. I will argue that, similarly, architects make use of Cemeteries of reinforced concrete are being constructed in which great masses of the popula-
such intellectual frameworks in their architectural prescriptions, and highlight how consid- tion are condemned to die of boredom. So what use are the extraordinary technological in-
ventions the world now has at its disposal, if the conditions are lacking to profit from them, if
427 Hubert Lampo, for example: De komst van Joachim Stiller [The Coming of Joachim Stiller], Meulenhof,
Amsterdam 1960
428 Jos Eduardo Agualusa, O Vendedor de Passados, Publicaes Dom Quixote, Lisbon, 2004 [translated as:
The Book of Chameleons, Arcadia Books, London, 2006]; Interview with the author in NRC Handelsblad,
March 20, 2009, Boeken, p. 4 431 See for an extensive study of these practices also: Lara Schrijver, Radical Games. Popping the Bubble of 1960s
429 Jos Eduardo Agualusa, My fathers wives, Arcadia Books, London, 2008 [original: As mulheres do meu pai, Architecture, Nai Publishers, Rotterdam, 2009
Editora Lngua Geral, Rio de Janeiro, 2007], read in Dutch: De vrouwen van mijn vader, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 432 Lara Schrijver, ibidem, p.28
2009 433 The Danish painter Asger Jorn, for example, took part in the well known CoBrA movement, but also in
430 Ricardo L. Castro claims that the work of Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona clearly bears influence an artist collective which aimed to bring new life to the Bauhaus with The International Movement for an
of magic realistic literature. Ricardo L. Castro, Architecture and Literature: The Syncretic Work of Rogelio Imaginist Bauhaus. Also a British artists collective was involved: the London Psychogeographic Committee.
Salmona, in: Proceedings of the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, ACSA See for a concise description of SIs birth Libero Andreottis introduction to Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa
Press, Washington DC, 1994, pp.255-260, (www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/castro/serlio/sal.htm, accessed 11-04-2005) (eds.), Theory of the Drive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, Barcelona 1996, pp. 7-9

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they add nothing to leisure, if imagination is wanting?434 Other situationist texts were written dreaming and chance play leading roles. As a playing nomad,439 man would move through
in a rather dreamy literary style. The writings of Gilles Ivain, for example, are in themselves this city and continuously change his living environment. New Babylon was thus a city in
already imaginative wanderings though urban ambiances, as the situationists called it. which the construction of new situations would continuously take place. This spatial experi-
Ivains Formulary for a New Urbanism reveals his new vision of time and space, featuring: ence connected to the creation of moments closely relates to Lefebvres thinking. It comes as
. . . cities assembling . . . buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing desires, no surprise that there was a mutual interest between Lefebvre and the Situationists Inter-
forces, events past, present and to come. . . . Everyone will live in his own personal cathedral . . . there national. Lefebvre wrote: Space is active . . . This is what Constant called an architecture of
will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one cannot help but love . . . ambiance . . . the creation of situations . . . the construction of spaces that are the creators of
This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary assemblage of castles, grottos, lakes, etc. . . . The ambiance, emotion, situation, what I called a theory of moments.440 With this strong temporal
districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by dimension, Constants spatial prescription can be described in terms of chronotope. Spatially, it
chance in everyday life.435 offers a virtually endless framework, extending above existing cities and landscapes, without
borders and constantly mutating. The role of time is focused on the momentary, the active
This new unitary urbanism was thought to create a more active, creative involvement by use of chance, the creation of different moments of changing experiences. As such, the chro-
inhabitants by means of the complex, ongoing activity which consciously recreates mans notope of New Babylon can also be seen as a critical framework: with this scenario, Constant
environment . . . it is the fruit of a new type of collective creativity.436 With this collective crea- indeed expressed a critique on the modern city in which such moments no longer seemed to
tivity, the situationists tried to re-establish a relationship between the city and everyday life happen, replacing it with a more vibrant city, in which momentary events are made possible,
by means of creating situations upon which the individual is forced to act. One of the key and in which space can be used in sudden and unexpected ways.
methods to construct such situations was the drive, a wandering expedition through the city,
not led by any standard geographical map but by disorienting movements. In a playful way, Another artistic group that combined an interest in text and architectural and urban sce-
the drive investigates the psychogeographical effects of the city. It aims to provoke different narios was a group of young architects who gathered on the editorial board of a magazine
ways of experiencing the urban structure.437 The drive made it possible to jettison the usual called Archigram, the first issue of which appeared in 1961.441 The name Archi-gram already
motivations for moving about a city and investigate the psychogeographical effects of the hints at the combination of architecture and textual communication; grammar. The issues of
city in a playful way. The objective was to bring out the experience of urban space in various the magazine featured prophetic scenarios in pop art style imagery. They were strongly influ-
162 ways. Through the drive, one played a game with the experience of the city by approaching enced by the political and philosophical context of the time: avant-garde practices in life-style, 163
it from unexpected angles, letting aspects of chance guide their explorations. It was Dutch- pop art and cinema, the thoughts of Levi-Strauss and Foucault, and the fast development of
man Constant Nieuwenhuijs who provided a three-dimensional elaboration of situationist technology. Themes such as time, movement and situation were at the core of Archigrams
thinking with his vision of a future urban society New Babylon438 in models, drawings and text. proposals. From literature, the members of Archigram borrowed the radical approach of
With New Babylon, he offered a view of an alternative world in which leisure, wandering, science fiction and the imagery of comic strips. They saw in these sources an alternative to the
mainstream, rational approach, and translated the radical views to imaginative new spatial
futures, fully equipped with the most excessive technologies to construct the most comforta-
434 Constant, Another city for another life, in Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa (eds.), Theory of the Drive
and Other Situationist Writings on the City, Barcelona 1996, p. 92 [originally published in Internationale Situ- ble conditions for the new urban dweller. Where Constant and the Situationists International
ationiste#2, December 1958, pp.37-40] focused on the experience of the city, Archigram showed a deep interest in product design:
Some of my notes on this subject have appeared in a much earlier version in Klaske Havik, Lived architecture and city were seen from the perspective of consumer culture, and conceived as
experience, places read: toward an urban literacy, in Grafe, Havik, Maaskant (eds.) OASE70 Architecture& consumer products. The designs of Archigram were not open, as in the situationist approach,
Literature. Reflections / Imaginations, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2006, pp. 37-49 but were instead very strongly defined: detailed designs for inflatable suits, capsules for living
435 Gilles Ivain (Ivan Chtcheglov), Formulary for a new urbanism in Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa
and other amazing machines. Even the city was approached as an object, even a character
(eds.), Theory of the Drive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, Barcelona 1996, p. 15 [written 1953, published
in its original version in Internationale Situationiste #1, June 1958] in itself: The Walking City (1964), for example, consisted of moveable objects housing urban
436 Constant and Guy Debord, The Amsterdam Declaration, in: Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa (eds.), facilities. Thus, as opposed to Constants New Babylon in which design was fundamentally
Theory of the Drive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, Barcelona 1996, p. 80 [originally published in
Internationale Situationiste#2, December 1958] 439 With his interest in play as an essential human need, Constant was indebted to Johan Huizinga: Homo
437 Guy Debord, in Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa (eds.), Theory of the Drive and Other Situationist Writings Ludens. Proeve eener bepaling van het spelelement der cultuur, H.D. Tjeenk Willink, Haarlem 1938, translated in
on the City, Barcelona 1996 [originally published in Potlach,1955]. English as Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Routledge, London, 2003. For
438 In a later stage, however, Guy Dbord, one of the leading figures of the Situationists, distanced himself a contemporary reading of play, see also Quentin Stevens, The Ludic City; exploring the potential of public
from New Babylon, claiming it would be too fixed an image. See for an extensive discussion of Constants work spaces, Routeledge, London 2007
in relation to the Situationists INternational: Mark Wigley (ed.), Constant Nieuwenhuijs: The Hyperarchitecture of 440 Henri Lefebvre Le temps de mprise, 1975, p.157, quoted in Edward Soja, Thirdspace (op. cit. note 74), p.50
Desire, Rotterdam, 1999 441 Peter Cook (ed. ) Archigram, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999

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open, employed to create diverse, unexpected situations, Archigram produced architectural ties of the future. He argues that surprisingly, many conflicts in society arise out of a belief
and urban prescriptions in the form of strongly defined images. One could say that in Archi- of the eternity of rules and system and institutions. Friedman therefore proposes alterna-
grams prescriptions, the objects rather than their users or inhabitants (houses, machines, tive, more flexible solutions that can take change into account. His point of departure is the
complete cities) were presented as the main protagonists. In Italy, the collective Superstudio freedom of the individual; personal mobility and temporality are the core themes of his spatial
was founded in 1966. Less focused on objects and technology, the members of Superstudio thought. Friedmans prescriptive approach entails recipes that call for improvization, rather
also proposed radical scenarios, inspired by literary and cinematographic techniques. Their than plans. His 1958 project LArchitecture Mobile445 sketches a scenario for a flexible, mobile
projects, which were not limited to architectural design, but included collages, film scripts, architecture which offers individual freedom to its users in time. This is achieved through the
furniture and texts feature existential literary themes such as life, love and death themes use of modular building systems, in which elements are interchangeable, as well as through a
that architecture, they complain, never addresses. Architecture all too often intervenes only well-connected network of infrastructure.446 A literally scriptive proposal is his Flatwriter,447
at a certain point in the process, usually when behavior has already been codified, furnish- an interactive tool for the design of houses. It consists of a keyboard presenting a number of
ing answers to rigidly stated problems.442 Against this limited role of architecture as a mere basic acts, such as the addition of rooms, spaces, rotation. In fact, the tool represents a kind
problem-solving discipline in a rationally organized society, they proposed to introduce more of grammar, with spatial steps instead of words and letters. A script is then defined by a set
poetry and irrationality in architecture. Their language is dreamlike, at times surreal. In The of rules. By these means, alternative scenarios for individual inhabitants can be constructed.
Fundamental Acts, they write: This idea of scenario is also present in Friedmans mode of presentation: the projects are often
Upon my arrival one day in a foreign (but not completely unknown) country, I noticed from posters and visualized in the form of storyboards; a mode of representation as well as of production.
newspapers that the official opening of a monumental building was about to take place . . . At the centre
of the city, and enormous open space with regular borders had been cleared. In this open space, images More recently, Raoul Bunschoten, architect of CHORA, used scenarios in his work on urban
of mountains and deserts were forming . . . Innumerable spectators were already sitting on folding projects. He defines scenarios as narrations of urban possibilities, alternative realities, alter-
chairs . . . and all were turned facing the same direction and wearing large glasses . . . Behind them, a native practices.448 In Bunschotens opinion, scenarios can be generated by the use of literary
rainbow was appearing and disappearing by turns. At the point towards which everybodys eyes were elements such as authors, actors, agents and angels. Especially the angels, who are symbolic
directed lay and enormous human figure . . . The figure seemed to be connected to a complicated piece heroes and messengers capable of moving through different layers of space,449 indicate an in-
of apparatus that reacted in various ways to the small movements of his arms and legs. Unexpectedly, terest in literature. While Bunschotens urban design ambitions resemble Friedmans search
164 the rainbow vanished completely and four rectangular buildings appeared at the four cardinal points. for an open frame in which various alternatives can develop, it is in this use of such mytho- 165
These buildings has certainly emerged from beneath the earth by means of hydraulic mechanisms. All logical characters, and in the creation of a sort of mythological world-view, that Bunschoten
the onlookers, leaving their chairs, formed four different corteges, and set off towards the buildings.443 follows the late architect John Hejduk, whose work will be discussed later in this chapter. Like
Hejduk, Bunschoten makes use of personification to attribute personality to objects. He
Superstudios scenarios, like Constants New Babylon, depict a society in which people move sees, for example, the earth as a living body, and cities as an artificially created second skin of
freely, like nomads, being able to settle anywhere. Their Supersurface, for example, is a bor- the earth. Architecture, then, reveals the relation between humans and earth through inscrip-
derless place, extending over the whole surface of the earth. Here and there are connection tions in the skin of the earth.450
points, into which technical equipment can be plugged. Although the scenarios of Constant,
Superstudio and Archigram served mainly as radical critiques on the boring rationality of 445 Yona Friedman, LArchitecture Mobile, 1958, re-published in Hilde Heynen, Andr Loecks et al (eds.),
modernist society and their proposals never reached nor were intended to reach the status of Dat is Architectuur. sleutelteksten uit de twintigste eeuw, 010 Publishers Rotterdam 2001
designs to be realized,444 some architects have attempted to include similar themes and objec- 446 A similar focus on changeability of architectural structures was also at stake in the work of the Dutch
tives in more realistic architectural scenarios. John Habraken and the SAR Foundation for Architects Research. In his book Supports, Habraken holds a plea
for a limitation of the work of the architect- rather than designing dwellings to the very detail, architects
should limit themselves to the structural and spatial framework, and allow for users to choose their own in-fill.
Hungarian-French architect Yona Friedman, is also intrigued by the technological possibili- Within such a framework, various forms of use, which change over time, can take place. Supports: an Alternate
to Mass Housing. Gateshead, UK (The Urban International Press) 2000 (reprint of the 1972 edition); original
442 From the project Superstudio, The Fundamental Acts (life-ceremony-education-love-death) 1971-1973, edition: De dragers en de mensen, Het einde van de massawoningbouw. Amsterdam (Scheltema en Holkema), 1962.
re-published in Martin van Schaik and Ottokar Mel (eds.) Exit Utopia. Architectural Provocations 1956-1976, 447 Yona Friedman, 1970
Prestel, Munich 2005. This fragment was also re-published in Architectural Positions, SUN 2009, p. 351 448 CHORA/ Raoul Bunschoten, Takuro Hoshino, Hlne Binet, Urban Flotsam, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam,
443 Superstudio, The Fundamental Acts / Ceremony, ibidem, p.356 2001, p.250
444 Though, one could argue, some of their visionary proposals have come close to reality if we consider 449 Ibidem, p. 252 Indeed, Bunschotens argument in Urban Flotsam comes with numerous literary
that now, some 50 years later, the individual freedom of movement has increased enormously, and plug-in references, such as Perec, Calvino and Borges.
connections points for technical equipment, just to name one of their many inventions, have become part of 450 FORUM 36/1 november 1992, special issue Raoul Bunschoten, Architectura & Amicitia, Amsterdam
our everyday lives. 1992, p.40

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vre was, with Michel Foucault,453 one of the first theorists who opened up spatial discourse,
The prescriptive architectural practices discussed above use various literary techniques, proposing more complex and inclusive ways of thinking about space. Precisely this opening
such as the creation of characters, the use of narrative and scenario techniques as well as towards spatial thought, claiming that space is simultaneously real and imagined, implies
literary writing styles in which illusion, myth and exaggeration are employed. The imagined that spatial thought should by no means be limited to a single discipline. Rather, opening up
situations they create while reacting to existing reality can form radical critiques, offer specu- spatial thought means to take on a multidisciplinary approach. Soja notes that Lefebvre, in
lations on new technological developments, or search for open scenarios in which new stories his thinking and writing, has been influenced by the literary movements of surrealism and
can evolve. However, the above discussed practices largely remained conceptual, and hardly magic realism, noticeable for example in Lefebvres fascinations with concrete abstractions,
ever resulted in physical solutions to the spatial questions of their time. The merit of these paradoxically materialist idealisation . . . simultaneous worlds of the real-and-imagined.454
practices is that they actively seek the balance between the real and the imagined, that they Soja points, for example, at Lefebvres literary way of composing his book The Production of
are selective in their world-view and in that sense also critical. It is through these themes that Space: as a voyage or musical composition, rather than as a scientific argument, meandering
we can discover new, more operational ways to include architectural prescriptions in contem- and branching off rather than employing a linear line of thought. In Lefebvres concept of
porary architectural and urban practice. lived space, Soja sees a clear parallel with Juan Luis Borges literary space called the Aleph. This
literary space is an inclusive space, in which impressions, experiences, memories and real
spatial experiences come together in a simultaneous experience:
Then I saw the Aleph. . . . the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass . . . In
4.2.2 Real and imagined: urban scenarios that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them amazed me
more than the fact that all of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transpar-
ency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous . . . and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that
For my argument, I wish to elaborate on reality and imagination in spatial design. I will first secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon
show how the combined quality of the real and the imagined, which we encounter in literary the unimaginable universe.455
prescriptions, comes to the fore in the spatial thought of, among others, geographer Edward
Soja. Then I will discuss how imagination can address the role of time in the construction of If the ultimate account of lived space is like the Aleph, a space in which all kinds of spatial
166 spatial prescriptions: designers by definition have to deal with the uncertainty about what experiences, both real and imagined come together, seen from all angles and in different tem- 167
will happen in a future situation. Precisely these themes will lead to a possibility of prescription poralities, then introducing lived space in spatial thought requires taking into consideration
in design: scenario planning. simultaneity, including both the real and the imagined. If we extend Sojas argument to not
only spatial thought, but also to its design, a step can be made towards a design approach
In his book Thirdspace, geographer Edward Soja discusses how the real and imagined both that allows imagination to generate multiple perspectives on space. Architecture theorist K.
take part in the production and experience of urban space. His work is a contemporary, close Michael Hays argues that architectural imagination has everything to do with place-making.
reading of Lefebvres theories on space. Following Lefebvre, Soja argues that space is never The architects reaction to a given situation, then, exists in that architectures imagination
neutral: unfolds all of its conditions into formal quanta, intensities, or architectemes and produces
Space is simultaneously objective and subjective, material and metaphorical, a medium and an analogue of the originary, purposeful, place-making condition of architecture.456 Analogy,
outcome of social life; actively both an immediate milieu and an originating presupposition, this literary concept that presents an other view, an interpretation of a given situation, is
empirical and theorizable, instrumental, strategic, essential.451 The imagination of space is indeed a possible instrument in imagining new accounts of places. Analogies can be seen as
by no means only the task of architects and urban planners, who conceive of not-yet-existing mental structures which facilitate an understanding of the world as much as they resemble
spaces by profession. Spaces are also imagined by their users, the imagination of space is
embedded in stories and memories. Indeed, this idea of space as not neutral, as both real
and imagined, closely relates to Lefebvres concept of lived space.452 Soja argues that Lefeb- 453 Soja aims at Foucaults concept of heterotopia, literally Other Places, described as the space in which
we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs,
Foucault, quoted in Soja, Thirdspace, op cit note 73, p. 15
451 Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Blackwell, Oxford, 454 Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Blackwell, Oxford,
1999 [1996], p. 45 1999 (1996), p.4
452 Closely following Lefebvres Livedspace, Soja proposes another term, Thirdspace, which he defines as: 455 Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories: 1933-1969, Bantham Books, New York 1971, as quoted and
a knowable and unknowable, real and imagined lifeworld of experiences, emotions, events, and political discussed in Soja, Thirdspace, op. cit. note 73, pp. 54-59
choices. Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, Blackwell, Oxford, 456 K. Michael Hays, Architectures Desire. reading the late avant-garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass / London
1999 (1996), p. 31 2010, p.27

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it.457 Architect Aldo Rossi is known for his use of analogy as an architectural tool. For Rossi,
analogical thought can be applied on different scales, from the urban to the object. This kind According to researcher Yeoryia Manolopoulou, who has investigated the role of chance in
of thought, according to Rossi, merges the real and the imagined, as it is sensed yet unreal, artistic practices, chance is fundamental in any spatial experience. She refers to the role of
imagined yet silent . . . archaic, unexpressed, and practically inexpressible by words.458 In his accident in literature, for example in Edgar Allen Poes The Angel of the Odd,462 which indeed
explanation accompanying the publication of his work The Analogous City, Rossi reflects on features the perception of momentary events. Here, it is the alienation from the expected that
the relation between reality and imagination, stating that it is the combination of both that generates the joy of reading. Likewise, meaningful experience of space has often to do with
should be taken into account in urban projects: alienation from the expected perception, and such experience happens suddenly, unexpect-
There is no invention, complexity or even irrationality that is not seen from the side of edly, through chance. Manolopoulou distinguishes three kinds of chance, as used in artistic
reason, or at least, from the side of the dialectics of the concrete. And I believe in the capacity practices. First, impulsive, intuitive chance, which is related to the dream, accident and the
of imagination as a concrete thing . . . description and knowledge should give rise to a further unconscious as an intuitive mechanism for creativity.463 This is the use of chance as encoun-
stage: the capacity of the imagination born from the concrete.459 In his text, Rossi argues to tered in the artistic and literary practices of Dada and surrealism. A second form of using
incorporate imagination in urban design: Without the capacity to imagine the future there chance is systematic, in that it is consciously applied in a systematic way. This can be seen,
can be no solution to the city as an essential social fact.460 Therefore, Rossi argues that the task for example, in the musical compositions of John Cage, who deliberately took into account
of the designer is indeed to imagine new realities while keeping in mind the concrete, existing indeterminacy in his musical compositions. Here, the method of composition is well defined,
reality, to but a chosen number of factors, such as amplitude, timbre and performance, are left open to
. . . offer alternatives . . . that can be discussed, understood and hence either accepted or re- chance, thereby generating multiple possibilities within the piece of music.464 Third, Manolo-
jected by the people who live in those cities. Gone are the days of urban models and with them poulou mentions active chance, which implies that chance is actively used not only in the
the age of urban techniques, self-description and functions passed off as solutions. The city conception of a work, but also in its further existence. In other words, the concrete realized
must be dealt with each time, by gathering and developing its contradictions, day by day, work also reacts to chance, caused by external forces such as the participation of users. In that
directly.461 sense, the situationist technique of drive, which stimulates people to participate in their envi-
ronment, was a positive practice of employing chance, arising collectively and in time as an
Rossi clearly criticizes the rigidity of urban planning practices. Indeed, urban models are expansive indeterminate drawing of action on the surface of the city.465
168 often too closed-off and therefore insufficient when it comes to the contradictions and uncer- Manolopoulou argues that if chance, in its different forms, has been productive in differ- 169
tainties that urban future has to offer. One could wonder if the traditional idea of designing ent artistic disciplines, it could also be productive in different stages of architectural design.
a fixed master plan does justice to the role of time and indeterminacy. While Rossis above Architecture of chance, then, becomes the architecture of the moment, vulnerable but con-
mentioned comments were written in the late 1960s, the current urban condition calls even structively so, to accident; it gains from failures and imperfections, and accepts chance as an
more for an awareness that architects and urban designers need to acknowledge that the city essential part of existence.466
is constantly changing. Especially in larger design projects for urban or landscape contexts,
the question is how to deal with these aspects of change. Indeed, the development of places I propose that important clues for an approach to architectural an urban design that enables
depends on a large number of factors, the role of which cannot always be completely known imaginative thinking about new spatial and temporal realities, taking into account the aspect
in advance: aspects of chance and indeterminacy produce unforeseen changes (of use, of poli- of uncertainty, can be found in literature. The literary technique of scenario writing offers val-
tics, of economic conditions, etcetera).By the very nature of their profession, which aims to uable means to develop multiple perspectives on urban and architectural futures. Scenarios
provide spatial constructions for a near future, architects are obliged to connect their spatial are scripts, prescribing different, possible future realities. As Pedro Gadanho, architect and
imagination to a view on how a situation (urban reality, site, context) will develop in time. editor of the collection of architectural short stories Beyond. Scenarios and Speculations argues,
One should therefore look for a design approach that can take into account chance and inde-
462 Edgar Allen Poe, Angel of the Odd, Argo, 2007 [1850], discussed by Yeoryia Manolopoulou at a lecture at
terminacy. the Delft School of Design, Delft University of Technology, March 18, 2008. The idea of chance is extensively
discussed in her PhD thesis: Yeoryia Manolopoulou Drawing on Chance: Indeterminacy, Perception and Design,
457 Lvi Strauss, Pense sauvage/ The Savage Mind, 1966, quoted by Hays, in K. Michael Hays, Architectures University College London, 2003
Desire. reading the late avant-garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass / London 2010, p.35 463 Yeoryia Manolopoulou, The Active Voice of Architecture: an Introduction to the Idea of Chance, in:
458 Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1982, quoted by Hays, in K. Michael FIELD Free journal for Architecture Vol 1 [1], p. 67
Hays, Architectures Desire. reading the late avant-garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass / London 2010, p.38 464 John Cage, Silence. Lectures and writings, Marion Boyars, London, 1987 [1968], p.35
459 Aldo Rossi, The Analogous City: panel, text accompanying the publication of the Analogous City panel, in: 465 Yeoryia Manolopoulou, The Active Voice of Architecture: an Introduction to the Idea of Chance, in:
Forum International 13, December 1976, pp. 5-6 FIELD Free journal for Architecture Vol 1 [1], p. 68. See for a further discussion of Situationist practices the
460 Ibidem, p. 6 next part of this chapter.
461 Ibidem, p.7 466 Ibidem, pp.71-72

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a set of possibilities within a framework. In that sense, the designer becomes a sort of script-
scenarios are greatly engaging because all it takes for them to challenge our minds is imagina- writer. In German a Schriftsteller, the one who puts scenes into writing. The architect becomes
tion itself: imagination on the part of those who invent them and imagination on the part of the one who imagines the scenes, and who writes the language with which new spatial scenes
those who take them in. The power of the scenario is that for a brief moment, imaginations can be constructed.470 It then becomes the task of the designer to analyse a given situation,
[can be] triggered into a parallel, possible and yet impossible reality. That moment is precious. set the stage and imagine which stories can be developed departing from the potential of the
It is the moment when minute details are taken to extremes. And when one learns limits to situation. If scenario planning is indeed the methodical thinking of the unthinkable,471 it
reality.467 Indeed, precisely the notions discussed in this chapter the balance between reality becomes clear that literary methods discussed in the first part of this chapter, relating to the
and imagination, the role of time, chance and simultaneity are at stake in the practice of construction of critical world-views and to the imaginative interpretations of reality, can be
scenario writing. One of the first known applications of scenarios for other than literary or operational in architectural and urban scenarios.
cinematographic purposes took place in the United States at the time of the cold war, as a
way to develop military strategies in extremely uncertain periods, such as nuclear threats.468
It was further developed in the 1970s as a methodology to help strategic decision-making in
business, by the Royal Dutch Shell oil company.469 The initiators at Shell believed that pre- 4.2.3 Temporal and spatial world-views: chronotope
dicting the future based on knowledge from the past was outdated. They applied the literary
techniques of setting a framework and composing multiple plots to deal with uncertain, but
important factors in their business strategies. Their idea was not to predict one ideal future, If architectural prescription is the act of imagining new situations, it must involve a view on
but instead to generate multiple possible ones, and to identify the driving forces of these al- space as well as time. As every activity takes place in space, but also in time, as Yi-Fu Tuan
ternative realities. In this way, the company could adapt its strategies to unforeseen changes. states: Space and time coexist, intermesh, and define each other in personal experience. Every
activity generates a particular spatio-temporal structure, but this structure seldom thrusts to
Important in scenario planning is thus the identification of possible factors of influence, the front of awareness.472 Such spatio-temporal awareness manifests itself, for example, by
and the definition, as stated in the Shell methodology, of the critical uncertainties. In recent expressions of travel: the distance from one place to another can be measured in time: half
decades scenario planning, as a methodology to deal with uncertainties of the future, has an hour by train or a four-hour flight. However, the aspect of temporality is at stake at more
170 been gaining ground in various fields of planning. Naturally, scenario planning can also be levels of spatial experience: 171
brought into action as a spatial practice that provides an alternative to traditional urban plan- Space has temporal meaning in the reflections of a poet, in the mystique of exploration,
ning. Indeed, in contemporary practice a shift is taking place towards more open design ap- and in the drama of migration. Space also has temporal meaning at the level of day-to-day
proaches, such as strategic planning and urban scenario planning, which allow for chance personal experiences. Language itself reveals the intimate connectivity among people, space
within a given framework. Urban scenario planning implies that, based on the analysis of and time.473 An interesting concept to address the relationship between time and space in
potentials of the existing situation, multiple alternatives can be developed. In this approach, world-views of literary writers has been offered by Russian philosopher and literary theorist
uncertainty is regarded as a potentially productive factor for the architectural, urban and Mikhail Bakthin. In his search for another way of categorizing literature than, for example,
landscape design. Scenario planning thus gives the designer another role than that of the the categorization in literary genres or themes, he proposed to investigate the way images of
traditional master planner, who works towards a fixed result. Rather, the designer develops time and space are presented in a narrative. Such analysis would reveal the dominant spatio-
temporal framework in a novel, the so-called chronotope.474 This chronotope can be seen as
467 Pedro Gadanho, Taken to Extremes, introduction to Pedro Gadanho (ed.), Beyond, shortstories on the
post-contemporary no.1. Scenarios and speculations, SUN Publishers Amsterdam 2009, p. 10 470 Professor Wim van den Bergh claims that John Hejduk uses a similar approach. Wim van den Bergh,
468 This scenario planning took place the military think tank RAND in the 1950, and was introduced by Stemloze rede, zwijgende spraak (Voiceless reason, silent speech), foreword to John Hejduk, Berlin Night, NAi
Herman Kahn. It has been said that Kahn was the model for Stanley Kubricks character Dr. Strangelove. See Publishers, Rotterdam 1993, see for further discussion the next part of this chapter.
also: Christian Salewski, Dr. Strangelove, I presume. On the intimate relation between between scenarios and 471 Peter Schwartz, The Art of The Long View. Planning for the future in an uncertain world. Broadway Business,
critical paranoia, paper presentation at Tickle your Catastophe conference, NGE (Dutch Aesthetics Society), New York 1996 [1991], as quoted in: Joel Garreau The Global Business Network, Wired 2.11, 1994, p.98
Department of Theatre Sciences Ghent University, Jan van Eyck Academy Maastricht, and KASK (Faculty of 472 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1977,
Fine Art) College University Ghent, March 06-07, 2009 Ghent Belgium pp.130-131
469 Key actors in this proces were Pierre Wack and, in a later stage, Peter Schwartz. Schwartz has clearly 473 Ibidem, p.126
formulated the steps in the process of scenario planning in: Peter Schwartz, The Art of The Long View. Planning 474 Bakthin introduced this notion in his 1938 essay Forms of Chronotope and Time in the Novel,
for the future in an uncertain world. Broadway Business, New York 1996 [1991]. The history of Shells explora- published in English translation in: M.M. Bakthin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakthin,
tions on scenario methodology has been extensively described in the texts of members of the Global Business University of Texas Press, 1981. See also: Bart Keunen, De Verbeelding van de Grootstad. Stads- en wereldbeelden in
Network, which was founded by Peter Schwartz in 1987, http://www.gbn.com/about/scenario_planning het proza van de moderniteit, VUB Press, Gent University, Brussels 2000 [The Imagination of the Metropolis. City-
(accessed 04-08-2010). See also: Joel Garreau The Global Business Network, Wired 2.11, 1994, p.98 and Worldviews in the prose of modernity], p. 69

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an intellectual construction with temporal and spatial dimensions. According to Bakthin, the chronotope, which combines a historical perspective with realistic spatial descriptions; the
chronotope functions as the primary means for materializing time in space, and as such, impressionistic chronotope, in which the subjective aesthetic experience of the narrator plays
it emerges as a center for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire a decisive role; and the hyperrealistic chronotope, connected to the writings of the avant-
novel.475 The chronotope concept can thus be defined as an intellectual structure, with both garde. Each of these chronotopes comes with a specific world-view, defined by the relation
a temporal and a spatial dimension, which establishes the world view presented in the novel. between spatial representation and temporal processes.480 The documentary chronotope, for
It is in this defined time-space frame that important events in the novel, such as encounters example, can be found in Emile Zolas descriptions of the urban spaces of modernity, such
and dialogues, take place. In that sense it is an organizing principle for literary work: it selects as department stores and market halls, which are connected to socioeconomic phenomena
the significant images corresponding to the right time-space frame. Through its chronotope, that are specific for a certain (historical) time.481 Keunen defines Walter Benjamins aesthetic
a literary world could present, for instance, a historical time-space frame, a future world, or view of the modern city as an impressionistic chronotope, characterized by a world-view
a world in which the relation between time and space is more complicated. For example, that is lyrical and subjective.482 Indeed, if we read Benjamins descriptions of cities such as
Scheerbarts descriptions of space, as well as Orwells and Houellebecqs, depict a world that Paris, Berlin, Naples or Moscow,483 we find that he does not treat the city as an abstraction, but
is imagined as a future one. In Orwells literary future, the reader still experiences memories rather describes fragments and details of the momentary experience of specific places. In the
of the past, evoked by the spatial descriptions of the ruins of the old London, but in the new Berlin Chronicle (Berliner Kindheit), for example, the city is a secretive place, something to be
world of Oceania, no reference to the past is possible: discovered by observation of details of stairs, streets, alleyways, courtyards; by imagination, by
Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? . . . Every record has memories. Berlin is described in a wandering way, the narrator encounters fragments of the
been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue city in a sequence of moments. Also when Benjamin introduces the character of the flaneur, in
and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing his reflections on the Parisian Arcades, this impressionistic chronotope is noticeable. The im-
day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in pressionistic chronotope, as encountered in Benjamins writing, thus combines a fragmented
which the Party is always right.476 account of space with a momentary account of time. As such, Benjamins spatial descriptions
are connected to an internal moment of experience: the moment of personal impression gen-
Quite a different manner of dealing with time and space can be found, for example, in erated by spatial circumstances. As Keunen explains: Perceiver and perceived come together
Prousts Remembrance of Things Past.477 A number of spaces, such as a family house, a theatre, in the internal time of the subjective perception or the subjective memory.484 This momen-
172 a cathedral or a garden, reappear throughout the extensive novel several times. However, the tary spatial experience strongly relates to the poetic moment of Bachelard: the moment of 173
descriptions are never quite the same: they are transformed by the memories, dreams and poetic experience, when the image is perceived, before it is reflected upon.485
imaginations of the protagonist Marcel, who develops throughout the novel from a young
boy, through adolescence, to a grown man. The enormous amount of detailed descriptions of Surrealism, in which discontinuity and simultaneity are at stake, has some of the most
such spatial images and memories are said to reflect Prousts quest to secure some sense of extreme chronotopes in literature, defined by Keunen as hyperrealistic. In Keunens words, the
temporal and spatial certainty, of precisely where and when he is . . . It is this sense of instabil- image of the hyperrealistic chronotope relies on the simultaneous representation of discon-
ity and flux that endows Prousts novel with its own characteristic chronotope.478 Indeed, the tinuous mimetic images . . . Because the development of time is pressed into one simultane-
whole work can be seen through this framework of the relation between spatial settings and ous moment, a space come into being which seems fragmented and disorganized. This hy-
the changing perceptions and memories they produce for the protagonist. perrealistic perception, states Keunen, is only seemingly chaotic, because the spatial borders
Belgian literary theorist Bart Keunen uses the concept of chronotope in his study of liter-
ary representations of the early modern metropolis. He distinguishes a number of different 480 Keunen, 2000. pp. 75-77. Even if in most literary works, there is usually one dominant chronotope,
chronotopes in literature describing cities in the age of modernity. These include the idyllic Keunen also speaks of polychronotopy: the co-existence of several different chronotopes in one work of
literature. Alfred Doblins Berlin Alexanderplatz from 1929 is used by Keunen as an example.
chronotope, in which the idyllic unity of the place, in many cases presenting a rural place as
481 Keunen, 2000. pp. 90-91, referring to writings of Emile Zola, such as Le Ventre de Paris, from 1873
opposed to the overabundance of the city, serves as a locus for entire life;479 the documentary 482 Bart Keunen, 2000, p. 83
483 In for example: Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aforisms, Autobiographical Writings, Schocken Books,
475 Bakthin, 1981, p.250 New York 1986; Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe Siecle, Editions Allia, Paris, 2003 [Paris, die Hauptstadt
476 George Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1965 (1949), pp. 126-127 des XIX Jahrhunderts, 1938, Suhrkamp 1972]; Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte SchriftenI-IV, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt
477 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Gallimard, Paris 1919, English translation by C.K.Scott am Main, 1980-89 [1974]
Moncrieff, Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Wordsworth Editions, 2006 see also the chapter 484 Keunen, 2000, pp. 82-85, translation from Dutch KMH
Description of this work. 485 See for a more detailed discussion of Bachelards poetic moment the chapter Description in this work.
478 Jeremy Lane, Pierre Bourdieu and the Chronotopes of Post-Theory in Martin McGuillan, Greame And indeed, this notion also relates to the aspect of temporality that has been touched upon in the chapter
MacDonald a.o. (eds) Post-Theory. New directions in criticism, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1999, p.98 Transcription by Ricoeurs argument that narrative can bring different temporalities (past, present, future)
479 Keunen, 2000. p. 80, quoting from Bakthin 1981 [1938], p.225 together.

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between fragments seem to dissolve, and make place for a strongly condensed series of tem- dynamic interplay of spatial and temporal dimensions, could it provide a condensed series
poral moments.486 The technique of montage is often used as the connecting principle in this of moments, as in the hyperrealistic chronotope of literary movements such as surrealism?
chronotope: fragments are no longer presented in a linear narrative, but are organized in a Remarkably, the literary concept of chronotope has not very often been connected to architec-
more associative way. Indeed, if we look back to Aragons Paris Peasant, we can see that what ture.490 According to K. Michael Hays, who placed the work of John Hejduk in this perspective,
seems at first a focused description of a specific place (the passage) and time (the moment of the chronotope provides a useful tool for synthesizing a number of . . . features into effective
wandering around), becomes a tumbling over each other of dreamlike events, taking place patterns if not a generalizable proposition.491 I would argue that in architecture, the concept
simultaneously and exceeding beyond the space of the passage itself, entering into the un- of chronotope is particularly interesting if we want to discuss the relation between spatial
limited space of the imagination. While in Paris Peasant the passage is still a concrete space imagination and time in the world-view of the architect.
to which the fragments are related, other surrealist writings, such as Bretons Nadja or the
writings of Paul Eluard, are even more fragmented and dreamlike, lacking a spatial focus. Indeed, one could state that architects, by the very nature of their profession, which aims
Instead of a spatial or temporal continuity, the fragments are bound together by montage, by to provide spatial constructions for a near future, are obliged to construct a framework in
the rhythm and style of the text, or by means of metaphor. The hyperrealist chronotope thus which their spatial imagination is connected to a view on how a situation (urban reality, site,
refers to extraordinary spatial scenes, taking place in a dynamic conception of time, charac- context) develops in time. Archigramss chronotope, for example, shows resemblance to that
terized by simultaneity. of Scheerbart: an idealized and exaggerated view on a new future, in which spatial experience
is dominated by new technological possibilities. One position could entail that prescriptions
The chronotope has a twofold function: on the one hand it is an artistic instrumentthat serves be based on continuity Aldo Rossi, for example, departs from an idea of the longue dure of
as a selective filter for the information presented in the novel, while on the other a chronotope architecture.492 The new architectural situations he constructs are embedded in the histori-
in a novel is often used by the writer as a metaphor for society.487 Indeed, as Bakthin states, cal continuity of urban typology. Rossis drawn manifest The Analogous City493 is very illustra-
the literary writer reflects on the existing world, by creating his own view on the world: . . . tive of how historical reality and imagination of future possibilities come together in a single
out of the actual chronotopes of our world . . . emerge the reflected and created chronotopes work. With his Analogous City panel, Rossi refers to Canalettos eighteenth-century painting
represented in the text.488 This is indeed the case for the various literary works discussed in of Venice,494 which is a superimposition of different fragments, both imagined and concrete,
the first part of this chapter. They each employ a specific framework with spatial and temporal quoted from elsewhere or actually existing on the site. Rossi does a similar thing: he puts
174 dimensions, and through this framework they react to reality and present a new, imagined together fragments that together offer an image of an alternative, but imaginable reality. The 175
one. A similar strategy is at hand in the production of architectural works. In architecture, work shows a collage of overlapping fragments, some of which present parts of the plan of
such a framework of time and space, which offers a selection filter for reacting to reality, is ancient Rome, or perspectives of existing spatial constructions, others fragments derive from
likely to be at the basis of architects imaginary prescriptions; their designs for future situa- Rossis designs for urban sites, a cemetery, even product design such as coffee pots. Together,
tions. Indeed, in architecture as well, one can think of a world-view defined by the author, an these fragments of real and imagined parts of the city, in which different times, spaces and
imaginary world, based on an interpretation of existing conditions, characterized by specific scales overlap, form a remarkably convincing construction of an urban situation, in which
temporal and spatial dimensions. Could, in an architectural chronotope, time become artis- concrete past and imagined future coexist. In Rossis chronotope, thus, memory plays an im-
tically visible, while space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot portant role in imagining future spaces. The approach of architect John Hejduk, on the other
and history,489 as Bakthin argued about the literary chronotope? Is time a linear feature for hand, has been characterized by K. Michael Hays as an impressionistic chronotope.495
an architect, can a future be foreseen, as in the chronotope of Scheerbart and futurist writers?
Does architecture respond to an ideal, artistic view of time and space, such as in an idyllic Indeed, Hejduks account of the city, as expressed in his so called Masques,496 typified by
chronotope? Do architectural typologies fit in a historically embedded perspective, as in the
490 An exception is the collection of essays on the work of John Hejduk, a result of a conference in Canada in
documentary chronotope, or is architecture flexible, and does a design take into account a
1996. K. Michael Hays (ed.) Hejduks Chronotope, Princeton Press, New York 1996. I will come back to Hejduks
chronotope further in this chapter.
486 Keunen, 2000, p. 98, translation KMH 491 Ibidem, p.10
487 This twofold function of the chronotope is further discussed in Janice Best, in: Janice Best The chronotope 492 Rossi explains his position in regard to the permanence of urban artefacts most explicitly in: Aldo Rossi,
and the generation of meaning in novels and paintings. Criticism. Spring 1994, Wayne State University Press. The Architecture of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1982, original publication Aldo Rossi, Larchitettura
(Digital version at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2220/is_n2_v36/ai_15435238/ , accessed 08 June, della citt, Marsilio, Padova 1966
2010). 493 Aldo Rossi, La Citt Analoga, collage, exhibited in the Venice Biennale 1976.
488 M.M. Bakthin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakthin, University of Texas Press, 1981, p. 494 Canaletto, Fantastic View with Rialto Bridge and the Basilica of Vicenza
253 495 K. Michael Hays (ed.) Hejduks Chronotope, Princeton Press, New York 1996, p.14
489 Bakthin, 1981, p. 250, quoted in Keunen, pp. 68-69, also quoted by Hays, in: K. Michael Hays (ed.) Hejduks 496 Hejduks Masques series consists of a number of publications, containing notes, poems and architectural
Chronotope, Princeton Press, New York 1996, p.14 sketches about Riga, Vladiwostok, Berlin and other cities. NNNNN

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Hays as narrative systems of time and space that produce a distinctive phenomenal feel
of places,497 bears resemblance to Benjamins subjective account of the city, with an intense 4.3 architectural prescription
merging of the real and the imagined centred on one moment the moment of experience.
For Hejduk, this moment is constructed through impressions of past events, existing situa-
tions and possible new relations between the physical objects of the city (its buildings, streets 4.3.1 Architectural prescription: Rem Koolhaas
and so forth), and its subjects: its inhabitants or passers-by. The subjects sometimes take on
imaginative identities like angels, which seem to be at home more in a literary dream-world
than in the practical realm of urban and architectural design. Hejduks drawings, poems and Prescription, as I understand this term, is thus more than setting the scene for future de-
designs depict a dream world, inhabited by literary figures such as angels and heroes. In his velopment. Rather, it can be understood as a scriptive approach in which the relationship
chronotope, a distance is thus taken from the rational, predictable world that most designers between reality and imagination is consciously explored to highlight select aspects of reality.
tend to work in. In Hejduks chronotope . . . the city itself becomes a smooth space of direc- In surrealist and magic realist writing, this entailed a search for the marvellous, while in
tional traces (both registering past events and projecting possible future ones) rather than a other literary prescriptions a critique on reality is expressed. In any case, mechanisms of se-
measurable, regulating grid.498 lection are important in constructing particular views on real and imagined situations. For
In that sense, Hejduks works resemble theatre scenes. According to Dutch architect and pro- the act of constructing situations, whether in text or in architecture, a view on space as well
fessor Wim van den Bergh: as time is necessary. Rather than looking for a fixed idea of a future situation, a prescriptive
Hejduks masques, his theatre pieces about the architecture of the city . . . are structured like approach to architecture and the city departs from an intellectual framework through which
free matrices for scenarios, with simultaneous sequences of objects and subjects. In this way, a selective view on the world is constructed, which guides the making of possible alternative
they generate the space of a virtual city with its specific hardware and software.499 This realities.
tension between real cities and their imagined subject-object relationships reveals a truly lit-
erary approach. Van den Bergh argues that Hejduk is an architect who writes architecture, In this part of the chapter, I will show how the work of Rem Koolhaas can be seen in this light.
by isolating architecture from its daily practice, by revealing its essences, by playing with its First, because both his writings and his architectural projects are based on a scriptive view
subjects and objects.500 Writing, in this case, is not understood as a linguistic practice, but as on the world and on artistic production. As is well known, Koolhaas was trained as a script-
176 a temporal-spatial one. Van den Bergh suggests that Hejduk develops a new spatio-temporal writer in Amsterdam before starting his architectural education, and worked as a journalist, 177
language through a number of operations. First, he isolates the scene from its social refer- editor and scriptwriter in the late 1960s.502 Asked about the parallels between scriptwriting
ences, considering it a world in itself; then, he articulates the scene through the articulation of and architecture, Koolhaas states:
forms and signs; third, a kind of ordering takes place; and finally, a dramatization. The archi- In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you
tect here becomes a scenographer, someone who becomes totally absorbed in the framework have to assemble things through editing, for example. Its exactly the same in architecture.
he constructs and rearranges ad infinitum.501 And indeed, this framework is temporal-spatial: Architects also put together spatial episodes to make sequences.503 As I will argue in the forth-
a chronotope. Hejduks architectural works are also based on a similar framework his con- coming paragraphs, both his texts concerning the urban condition from Delirious New York
structions do not in the first place address practical problems or prescribe future use, rather, to Generic City or Junkspace and his designs can be understood as the product of a combina-
they offer dreamlike impressions, stage-sets for alternative realities. Hejduks chronotope, tion of scriptwriting and architecture. A second reason to discuss the approach of Koolhaas is
then, implies an architecture of the moment, in which a set of possible spatial configurations that in his wide range of projects a great number of prescriptive techniques can be identified,
is at play. As can be seen from the examples of Aldo Rossi and John Hejduk, the chronotope derived from surrealist practices, avant-garde experiments and literary speculations. Meta-
can indeed be used as a conceptual filter through which time and space are understood in the phors, montage techniques, the paranoid critical method and productive uncertainty of
production of architectural projects. Embedded in the chronotope, is also the delicate balance chance can all be encountered in writings and designs by Koolhaas/OMA. Finally, Koolhaass
between reality and imagination; the reality of past and present space, the imagination of work is embedded in an intellectual framework that involves a specific view on space and
future spatial situations. time, in other words, a chronotope. This chronotope does not only offer Koolhaas a frame-

497 K. Michael Hays, Architectures Desire. reading the late avant-garde, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass / London 502 Koolhaas was involved with the Dutch magazine Haagsche Post as writer and editor. As scriptwriter,
2010, p.111 most notably are the works made with his fellow students in Filmgroep 123, some members of which have later
498 K. Michael Hays, Hejduks Chronotope, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 1996, pp. 11-14 become successful cinematographers or directors. See also Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Con-
499 Wim van den Bergh, Stemloze rede, zwijgende spraak (Voiceless reason, silent speech), foreword to struction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008, p. 3
John Hejduk, Berlin NIght, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 1993, p. 8, translation from Dutch KMH 503 Evil Can also Be Beautiful, interview with Rem Koolhaas, Der Spiegel , March 27 2006, The interview was
500 ibidem, p.4 conducted by editors Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein. (Online version at http://www.spiegel.de/
501 Ibidem, p.6 international/spiegel/0,1518,408748-2,00.html, visited Oct 27, 2009).

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work for literary production, but also for architectural and urban design. I will first focus together. It is the theory of Manhattanism that reaches across time, to the past as well as to a
on Delirious New York as an early prescriptive project of Koolhaass, which constructs a basis possible future, or a possible present: the Manhattan that could have been if only its doctrine
for later projects, both written and designed. I will identify the use of literary instruments in had been successfully executed. Thus, the chronotope of Delirious New York is by no means
Delirious New York and in OMAs later work to show how the prescriptive approach is used not limited to a mere reading of history: on the contrary, it selects and prescribes scenarios for an
only as a tool of analysis, but also of architectural production. Or rather, that analysis in itself overwhelming urban condition in which there is no such thing as linear time.
can be a form of architectural production.
In Delirious New York, metaphors play an important role. The first large metaphor is provided
Koolhaass scriptive approach informed his explorations of New York in the 1970s, where by Coney Island, a world of fantasy, created in the late nineteenth century on an island south
he adopted the not only the role of the reader/observer of the urban condition, but also of of Brooklyn, to entertain the masses. The built fantasies of Coney Island, discussed in the first
its scriptwriter. In Delirious New York, published in 1978 perhaps his most extensive urban chapter of Delirious New York as the fascinating outcome of the technology of the fantastic
script, and the one that gave him wide international acclaim Koolhaas calls himself Man- stand for the spirit that has also created the metropolitan condition of Manhattan. An other
hattans ghostwriter.504 According to Roberto Gargiani, in his extensive study on the work of recurring metaphor is that of the archipelago. While this notion was in fact used earlier in
Koolhaas and OMA, Delirious New York is in itself a conceptual-metaphorical project, a script Koolhaass collaboration with Oswald Matthias Ungers in relation to city patterns, in Manhat-
where the skyscrapers are the actors and Manhattan is the stage.505 I dare say that Manhat- tan, the archipelago is one of blocks, defined by the grid. Each block functions, according to
tan itself is even the main character, a personality rather than a stage, while Koolhaas himself Koolhaas, like a separate island, independent of its neighbours.508 Other metaphors present
is the director, bringing the scenes, located in the past, present or imaginative future of the in Delirious New York are the buildings like mountains, and the skyscraper as a city within a
movie star506 Manhattan in an overarching urban script. By doing so, he attempted not only city. Koolhaas shows how, when dealing with the ungraspable size and character of Manhat-
to describe the city, but also to prescribe it, as if to reveal a secret scenario hidden below Man- tan, the metaphor became a planning tool: planners and theoreticians dealing with Manhat-
hattans skyscrapers: the doctrine of Manhattanism, a doctrine that not only tells the history tan in the early twentieth century, such as Harvey Wiley Corbett, talked about their visions for
of Manhattan, but that could also guide future developments as a conscious doctrine whose Manhattan in terms of metaphors Manhattan as a very modernized Venice rather than
pertinence is no longer limited to the island of its invention.507 The book presents a number in traditional planning schemes. Koolhaas argues that the metaphor could serve as a new way
of fictive projects for Manhattan, design studies made by Koolhaas and his early OMA co- of urban planning: a vocabulary of poetic formulas that replaces objective planning in favor
178 founders Elia Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. If Delirious New York is a retroactive mani- of a new discipline of metaphoric planning to deal with a metropolitan situation fundamen- 179
festo for Manhattan, then the projects presented in the fictional conclusion of the book tally beyond the quantifiable.509
are the results of a retroactive imagining of what Manhattan could have become if only its
doctrine were practiced to the very limits. While Koolhaas frequently refers to the relation between grid and blocks as to a City of
archipelagos,510 to indicate the independence of each island as an ideological laboratory511
The mixture of real and fictive elements in Delirious New York leads back to the literary concept within the rigid order of the grid, the text itself is composed precisely as such an archipelago,
of the chronotope, defined earlier in this chapter as the spatio-temporal world-view of the in which various episodes take place simultaneously. The text of Delirious New York is made
author. Indeed, Delirious New York can be seen as a chronotope; the work places the object of up of short fragments touching upon theory, historical cases and fictional projects. These ele-
investigation in a specifically chosen time-space frame, and offers a selective account of Man- ments are not hierarchically ordered; they are placed on equal footing, they alternate with one
hattan, in which historical examples (Coney Island, Rockefeller Centre) are presented along- another, engage in dialogue. It is a form used earlier by Walter Benjamin. Benjamins One-Way
side fictional projects. The many fragments of Manhattan, both real and imagined, both his- Street, for example, is an assemblage of associations, experiences and theories, objective and
torical and contemporary or futuristic, seem to come together in an all encompassing present subjective, descriptive and interpretative, the author at once being writer and director.512 As
of Manhattanism: their chronological order is less relevant than the doctrine that holds them
508 The population of Manhattan - journeying from block to block - would finally, and literally, inhabit a
504 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, The Monacelli Press, New York metropolitan archipelago of 2,028 islands of its own making. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, p. 125
1994 [1978] p. 11 509 Ibidem, p. 125
505 Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 510 Ibidem, p. 97, 123. The term archipelago derived from earlier discussions with the German architect
2008, p.62 Matthias Ungers, with whom Koolhaas closely collaborated. The use of the notion archipelago in the work of
506 Movie stars who have led adventure-packed lives are often too egocentric to discover patterns, to Ungers and Koolhaas has been discussed in the dissertation of Pier Vittorio Aureli,The possibility of an Absolute
articulate or express intentions, too restless o record or remember events. Ghostwriters do it for them. In Architecture (Writing Architecture) MIT Press, Cambridge 2011 See also Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA:
the same way, I was Manhattans ghostwriter. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008, pp. 45-46
Manhattan, The Monacelli Press, New York 1994 [1978] p. 11 511 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, p. 294
507 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, The Monacelli Press, New York 512 Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, original in German: Einbahnstrae, Ernst Rowolt Verlag, Berlin 1928,
1994 [1978] p. p. 293 read in Dutch translation: Eenrichtingsstraat, Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen 1994

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stated earlier, Benjamins writings of the modern cities of the early twentieth century, such as tions are made to prove a still un-built, thus totally imaginary construction. The fictional pro-
Paris, Berlin, Naples and Moscow, are fragments of urban experiences. In this way, he seeks to jects presented in Delirious New York, such as the New Welfare Island and the Floating Swimming
produce texts which not only give an account of the city, but have metropolitan experiences Pool, can be understood in precisely this way: as conceived through a method of speculation.
fundamentally embedded within them.513 In other words, the modern urban experience, These projects are scenarios of what could have emerged if Manhattanism had been taken to
which is more fragmented, immediate and confusing than before, is reflected in the style of the extreme, as if it were a doctrine, a system of rules to which all designs for New York should
Benjamins writing. A similar process takes place in Koolhaass Delirious New York. However, respond. The collection of projects create a city where permanent monoliths celebrate metro-
while Benjamin concentrates on the subjective experience of the urban phenomenon, Kool- politan instability, in which the bases of the skyscrapers are ideological laboratories, placed
haas takes more distance from his subject: rather than revealing his personal encounters with on the grid to form an archipelago of Cities within Cities.517 The Welfare Palace Hotel, part of
the typical atmospheres of the city he explores, he presents Manhattan as an abstraction, a the project for New Welfare Island (1975-1976) is presented as such a City within a City: it is
theory in itself, for which he collects proof by focusing on (architectural) fragments. While a diverse collection of towers clad in a diversity of materials and housing a large amount of
Benjamins chronotope concentrates on the moments of experience, Koolhaas combines his- programmatic functions. Its floors offer different atmospheres, all with a metaphorical theme,
torical references and future images (in the form of his own fictional projects) in a montage such as the shipwreck, the uninhabited island and a waterfall. The Floating Pool is literally
that suggests simultaneity. This montage is extremely structured, however, and coincides with presented as a story, involving the other fictional projects such as the New Welfare Island and
its content: the fragments can be seen as urban blocks that together constitute the pattern of the Sphinx as characters.518
the city: the grid.
In Delirious New York, Koolhaas thus wrote Manhattan on multiple levels, while limiting
In this aspect of simultaneity, in the use of montage, and in the focus on the fantastic, the himself to only that which would offer proof for his hypothesis on Manhattanism by means
chronotope of Delirious New York shows a striking resemblance to what Keunen defined as the of a number of scriptive tools: the use of characters; interpretations of surrealist methods like
hyperrealistic chronotope, present in many surrealistic literary works. For Delirious New York, the paranoid critical; the use of metaphors; techniques of montage of fragments; and the use
Koolhaas adapted the paranoid critical method of surrealism. This artistic method was coined by of a chronotope an intellectual framework with spatial and temporal dimensions as a se-
Salvador Dal in 1929 as the spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the criti- lective mechanism. Later textual projects by Koolhaas on contemporary urban phenomena,
cal and systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations.514 Whereas such as Generic City (1995) and Junkspace (2000) can be seen precisely in this light. They also
180 Dal used this method to meticulously investigate the subconscious, Koolhaas instead made construct urban scenarios by a selective description of real and imaginary situations. 181
it into a system of interpretation of reality. Koolhaas explained paranoia as While Delirious New York starts off from an historical perspective, looking back to the birth
a delirium of interpretation. Each fact, event, force, observation is caught in one system of of the culture of congestion, in order to state its relevance for the contemporary, Generic
speculation and understood by the afflicted individual in such a way that it absolutely con- City and Junkspace plunge into contemporary urban phenomena, enlarging them to such an
firms and reinforces his thesis that is, the initial delusion that is his point of departure.515 extent that their present state is all that matters. The Generic City,519 published in 1995, is both
Indeed, in Delirious New York, all the collected fragments point in the same interpretative an imagined prescription of a future urban condition and an experienced reality of the author.
direction: that of Manhattanism as a doctrine, as an alternative form of modernism: one As Roberto Gargiani correctly remarks in his extensive study on the works of Koolhaas,520 by
based on congestion, ambiguity and contradiction, rather than on the mere functionality that the time of writing of The Generic City, in 1994, Koolhaas was already a frequent traveller, seeing
characterized European modernism. The power of the paranoid critical method, according to much of the world from airplanes, frequenting airports and hotels that were indeed neutral,
Koolhaas, is that it offers a rational method which does not pretend to be objective, through all alike. This urban condition, experienced in expanding cities all over the world, particu-
which analysis becomes identical to creation.516 At this point, the paranoid critical becomes larly in the fast-growing metropoles of Asia, offered a scenario in which the historical centre,
interesting as a design method. To some extent, as Koolhaas himself mentions in Delirious New giving identity to the traditional cities, no longer plays a role; in which the public realm is no
York, every act of design can be characterized as paranoid critical as its drawings and calcula- longer a space for social interaction but a vast and neutral plain of endless mobility. Indeed, at
513 Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectic of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, MIT press, Cambridge, the end of The Generic City, Koolhaas portrays the demise of the city as a film played in reverse,
MA, 1997 [1989], p. 183. Benjamins style of reading and writing the city has also been discussed in the bright with the vitality gradually disappearing from an urban scene: a marketplace, not by accident
essay of Pinar Balat, in the students magazine of my msc2 City & Literature course: Written City. Nine Visions. a much-used image for the public domain. The image he depicts is one of loss: the end of
TU Delft 2010, and presented at Once Upon a Place. International conference on Architecture and Fiction, Lisbon,
11-15 October 2010 517 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, Appendix: A Fictional Conclusion, Project The City of the Captive Globe,
514 Salvador Dal, Conversations with Dal, Dutton, New York 1969, p.115, quoted in Rem Koolhaas, Delirious pp. 294-296
New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, The Monacelli Press, New York 1994 [1978], p. 237 518 Ibidem, Appendix: A Fictional Conclusion, Project The Story of the Pool (1977), pp.307-311
515 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, p.238 519 Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City. guide, in S.M.L,XL, The Monacelli Press, New York 1995, pp. 1252-3
516 Rem Koolhaas, Surrealism, in: Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam/ 520 Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne,
The Monacelli Press, New York, 1995, p. 1190(margin dictionary). Also quoted in Gargiani 2008, p.13 2008, p.230

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the city, the end of such a concept as the public realm:
Market scene: from left and right extras cloaked in colorful rags, furs, silken robes walk into the frame
yelling, gesticulating, rolling their eyes, starting fights, laughing, scratching their beard, hairpieces
dripping with glue, thronging toward the center of the image waving sticks, fists, overturning stalls,
trampling animals . . . Now switch off the sound . . . and reverse the film. The now mute but still visibly
agitated men and women stumble backward . . . The center empties; the last shadows evacuate the rec-
tangle of the picture frame, probably complaining, but fortunately we dont hear them. Silence is now
reinforced by emptiness: the image shows empty stalls, some debris that was trampled underfoot. Relief
. . . its over. That is the story of the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theater now . . .521

The evacuation of the public realm522 signifies for Koolhaas the end of the city as a recogniz-
1
able location, with its specific identity and history, rooted in the lives of its inhabitants. In that
sense, Koolhaass account of this urban condition is reminiscent of the concept of non-place,
defined by anthropologist Marc Aug as the space of supermodernity, a place without iden-
tity, history or social relations.523 It is remarkable that both essays, by Koolhaas and Aug,
written in practically the same period, bear similar chronotopes. Augs essay begins with a
literary description of a character passing through non-places: a French highway, paying toll
with a credit card, a parking garage, an airport lounge, an airplane. Then, Aug sets out to
define supermodernity as a current condition, characterized by the excess of time, the excess
of space and the excess of individuality. By the excess of time, Aug refers to the difficulty in
thinking about time, caused by the overabundance of events merging the present with the
recent past.524 The excess of space is linked to globalization the possibilities of world-wide
182 travel and communication. The excess of individuality, according to Aug, comes with a loss 183
of collective identity. The space that comes with this condition of modernity is presented by
Aug as the opposite of anthropological place, place rooted in history, embedded in local
cultures and practiced through social relations: places of identity, of relations and of history.
525
Non-place, thus, is a location in which these three elements are absent. In non-place, there
2
is no room for history unless it has been transformed into an element of spectacle . . . What
reigns here is actuality, the urgency of the present moment.526 The similarity with Koolhaass
view is striking:
The Generic City is the city liberated from the captivity of center, from the straitjacket of
identity. The Generic City breaks with this destructive cycle of dependence: it is nothing but
a reflection of present need and present ability. It is the city without history. . . . It is equally
exiting or unexciting everywhere. It is superficial like a Hollywood studio lot, it can
produce a new identity every Monday morning.527 The Generic City is precisely captured in
Augs words, as a

521 Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City, in S.M.L,XL, The Monacelli Press, New York 1995, pp. 1264
522 Ibidem, pp. 1251
523 Marc Aug, Non-Places.Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London / New York (Verso) 1995;
oorspr. Non-Lieux. Introduction une anthropologie de la surmodernit. Paris, 1992.
524 Ibidem, p. 30
525 Ibidem, p. 52
526 Ibidem, pp. 104-104 1 Delirious New York as a scriptive project by Rem Koolhaas. Drawing by Madelon Vriesendorp.
527 Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City, in S.M.L,XL, The Monacelli Press, New York 1995, pp. 1249-50 2 The Floating Swimming Pool, one of the fictional projects in Delirious New York.

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. . . prophetic evocation of spaces in which neither identity, nor relations, nor history really
make any sense; spaces in which solitude is experienced as an overburdening or emptying 4.3.2 Critique and imagination: projects by Koolhaas/OMA
of individuality, in which only the movement of the fleeting images enables the observer to
hypothesize the existence of a past and glimpse the possibility of a future. 528 For Koolhaas, literature is not only a source of inspiration, but also a mode of looking at the
world. It is no coincidence that Koolhaas named his office after the metropolitan condition in
While this last part of The Generic City is presented as a screenplay, the rest of the text is me- which the real and the imagined take new positions. The metropolitan condition, states Kool-
ticulously built up as a rational structure, a recipe or, indeed, a prescription, divided in short haas, stands for reality shortage.531 The aim of OMA, then, was to embrace aspects of the
chapters summing up the elements of the Generic City as a species to be determined by the maligned metropolitan condition with enthusiasm, and which restores mythical, symbolic,
sum of its separate ingredients. In Junkspace, any rational order is absent, no structure at all literary, oneiric, critical and popular functions to large urban centers.532 Indeed, OMAs pro-
can be discovered in this text that has hardly any punctuation, no time to pause, a waterfall jects frequently address such issues, critically producing new urban forms and programmes.
of observations tumbling over one another in the maelstrom that is the very character of the The rational modern approach is changed for a literary one, making use of fragments, meta-
endless space that Koolhaas wishes to describe: junk. It is a chaotic space without hierarchy, phors, characters, playing with the real and imagined in search of architectural and urban
without orientation, defined by details, technology, advertisement. In terms of their subject merveilles.533 Here we come back to the beginning of this chapter, where a number of liter-
matter, one might see The Generic City and Junkspace, respectively a visionary prescription and ary prescriptions were highlighted. The discussed features in these works are indeed the game
an exaggerative spatial description of the twenty-first-century megalopolis, as being miles played on the borders of reality and imagination, the search for the marvellous, as well as the
apart from the historical, retroactive manifesto for Manhattan in Delirious New York. However, critical attitude towards society. Rather than close reading one of Koolhaass architectural
the texts are not so far apart if we consider the fact that Koolhaas reads Manhattan not so projects, like I did in the previous chapters with the works of Bernard Tschumi and Steven
much as a historical case, but precisely as a doctrine that could claim its place among con- Holl, I chose in this case to discuss a larger amount of projects, which allows me to point out
temporary urbanisms.529 In the end, it is the metropolitan condition that fascinates Koolhaas, how the prescriptive approach of Koolhaas is at stake at different levels and takes on different
and that interests him because of the implications it has for the architectural and urban plan- forms for each task at hand. I need to note here that no difference should be made between
ning professions. It becomes clear that for Koolhaas, the city does not need to be a clear well- Koolhaass written and designed projects , in the sense that written works are not explanations
organized system, as European modernism would have wished. Opposed to this traditional of the architectural position of the office, but rather projects in themselves. This is to say that
184 model, Koolhaas proposes that the metropolis can be a system of fragments . . . the remnant of for Koolhaas, architectural production can result in buildings, urban or territorial scenarios, 185
the historical core may be one of multiple realities.530 Here, we find a clue to the role Koolhaas or in text.
sees for the architect a role that comes close to the situationist approach: architecture as a
means to reveal, construct, manipulate or transform urban situations. Already in the early design projects of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Kool-
haas combined his experience with such scriptive techniques with a deep interest in the
methods of surrealism. Indeed, early architectural projects, such as the Exodus competition
project, conducted with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp during his study at
the AA, can be seen as an urban script; reacting on the real, exaggerating the observed reality,
imagining future scenarios. The Exodus project imagined an extreme future for London in
which part of the historical city would be replaced by a megastructure, a huge strip in which
various programmes were placed. Fictive characters (voluntary prisoners) would take part
in rituals and events. The Strip is composed as a sequence of squares, like different scenes
the characters pass through during the course of the narrative. The project is reminiscent of
Archigrams radical urban scenarios as well as of Constants New Babylon, and of Nineteen
Eighty-Four by George Orwell, in which radical new urban forms are also superimposed on

531 Programmatical text at the founding of O.M.A., in Lotus International #11, 1976, p.34
532 Rem Koolhaas, in: OMA, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 1995,
p. 926, originally published at the founding of O.M.A., in Lotus International #11, 1976, p.34
528 Marc Aug, Non-Places, p.87 533 It is Roberto Gargiani, who in his work on Koolhaas and OMA uses the term merveilles as a
529 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, p.10 common denominator for Koolhaas projects. Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of
530 Ibidem, p.201 Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008

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a decaying London. The surrealist game of the cadavre exquis,534 in which each participant
draws a part of a creature without seeing the previously drawn parts, was a model for team-
work in the early days of OMA, for example in the competition project for the Binnenhof
Parliament headquarters in The Hague, 1977-1978. In this project, according to Koolhaas, the
transformative nature of both the historical Binnenhof site and democratic institutions in
general, asked for a radical gesture, a transformation that confronts the existing amalgam of
historical buildings with a radical modernity. OMA proposed a horizontal slab, breaching the
existing complex, while connected to this axis, a number of volumes with different characters
were added. Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Zaha Hadid independently developed these
volumes, which were then assembled by Koolhaas.535 In later works, Koolhaas also makes use
of this method of assembling independent parts. It is indeed a method that allows one to
3
work with chance in design. Sometimes the cadavre exquis is not intended as a method, but
is welcomed as the outcome of chance in the course of a project. The Dutch Dance Theater
in The Hague is such an example in fact, Cadavre Exquis is the title given by Koolhaas
to the chapter in S,M,L,XL presenting this project.536 The design, originally made for a site in
the sea-side town of Scheveningen in the early 1980s, was transplanted in a late phase of the
process to the city centre of The Hague, and happened to share the site with a new concert
hall by another architect, Van Mourik. The dance theatre and the concert hall were to share
the same entrance and lobby. Here, the accident is consciously accepted and turned into ar-
chitectural benefit. The demarcation line of this unintended cadavre exquis becomes the most
prominent part of the building complex: the lobby. In the competition project for the Trs
Grande Bibliothque in Paris (1989), chance played a role in the composition of the project by
186 reversing the method of design: instead of building spaces, the most important spaces were 187
conceived as absence of building, voids, carved out of a simple volume. By these means, the 4

voids acted as independent entities shaping the rest of the building as if by accident. The
assemblage of fragments seemingly randomly in a cadavre exquis or consciously composed
in a montage comes back in a number of projects. The Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992) consists
of the montage of the exhibition spaces, auditorium, restaurant and other functions along
two public routes on the site and the internal route in the building. While at first sight the
building may look like a simple box, it is the scenographic assemblage of different spaces a
sloping auditorium, a dark exhibition space with trees, a glazed gallery, an open brightly lit
hall by means of sloping surfaces that generates an experiential complexity quite opposite
to the initial box appearance. Similarly, the competition project for the Jussieu Library in
Paris, France (1993) were seen as urban scenarios within the envelop of a simple volume.
In S,M,L,XL, the project is presented as a continuous section indeed, a sequence of spaces of
5

534 A known painting, which resulted from this work, was Cadavre Exquis, made in 1929 by Andr Breton, 3 The competition entry for the Dutch Parliament Headquarters, 1977-1978, was conceived as a
Paul Eluard, Valentin Hugo and Tristan Tzara, collection Moderna Museet Stockholm. Cadavre Exquis
535 Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne,
4 Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague: the accident of a change of site at a late stage in
2008, p. 77. Project description by OMA in O.M.A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S.M.L,XL, 010 Publishers,
Rotterdam/ The Monacelli Press, New York 1995, pp. 278-303 the process, and sharing the new site with a concert hall by another architect, is consciously
536 O.M.A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S.M.L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam/ The Monacelli Press, New accepted and turned into an architectural benefit.
York 1995, p. 305 5 Kunsthal, Rotterdam (1992), montage along internal and public routes.

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different height and atmosphere which is experienced as an interior urban route.537 The idea
of a continuous sequence of spaces, connected by a sloping route, comes back in the Dutch
Embassy in Berlin, built in 2003.

The books S,M,L,XL (1995) and Content (2004)538 are also projects of assemblage: fragments of
different kinds project descriptions, diary texts, manifestoes, images, graphs, interviews
are held together by means of a metaphorical order. While S,M,L,XL is organized around scale
starting with small projects, through the manifesto of Bigness to the extra large territorial
projects Content has a geographical order: the mantra Go East starts with OMAs activi-
ties for the magazine Wired in San Francisco and the building of the Seattle Public Library
and jumps via projects, interview and observations in among others Harvard, New York,
6
So Paolo, Oporto, Berlin and St Petersburg to the mega cities of Beijing and Singapore. In
both cases this metaphorical instead of chronological order implies an aspect of chance that
renders projects to become neighbours even if their dates of conception are far apart. Content
may be seen as a journey through the urban phenomena of the early twenty-first century. It
gives an account of the world at that moment, as Koolhaas states the book is a product of the
moment . . . it is not timeless, it is almost out of date already.539 Koolhaass view is that of a
traveller, a well-informed outsider who can report from a critical distance. This character of
the traveller, scouring the earth . . . as a vagabond, shows resemblance to the position Lefeb-
vre took for his writing, as I discussed earlier in this chapter.540 From the point of view of the
vagabond, indeed, space is never neutral, it is unstable and dynamic, rendering opportunities
to create new stories. And fiction is never far in Koolhaass projects. S,M,L,XL is presented as
188 a novel about architecture. It is not a novel in the traditional literary sense, but it is undeni- 189
7
ably a product of a novelist of architecture: Koolhaas introduces readings of reality, fictions,
metaphors and narratives. While OMAs architectural designs, presented in this book, may
introduce new fictions, through their use of characters, through metaphors, spatial sequences
and narratives, the context for design tasks, especially on the larger scale, is often read as a
fiction, which can indeed render clues for design the projects for New York, for example,
based on the hypothesis of Manhattanism. In the dictionary in S,M,L,XL, Koolhaas quotes
the British science-fiction writer J.G. Ballard on the term fictions:
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind . . . we live inside an enormous novel. For
the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of
his novel. The fiction is already there. The writers task is to invent the reality.541 This might
be the case for the architect as well, Koolhaas seems to suggest. Or maybe, fiction and reality
are no longer distinguishable in the metropolitan condition. Is design a fiction, or a future
reality, is the reality that designers are asked to react upon in any case an objective, rationally

537 O.M.A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S.M.L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam/ The Monacelli Press, New
York 1995, pp.1318-1326
538 AMO/OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Content, Taschen, Kln, 2004
539 Ibidem, p.16
540 See paragraph 4.2.2: Real and imagined: urban scenarios. 6 Competition entry for Jussieu Library (1993): section as a sequence of urban scenarios.
541 Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S.M.L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam/ The Monacelli Press, New York 7 Zeebrugge Terminal (1989) Metaphors to free-associate with successive moods- the mechani-
1995, p.492, 1289. cal, the industrial, the utilitarian, the abstract, the poetic, the surreal.

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explainable one or rather a field of contradicting stories and metaphors? For Koolhaas, fiction
seems to work both ways.

In Koolhaass world, buildings can be characters, such as the New York skyscrapers as depicted
by the paintings of Madelon Vriesendorp in Delirious New York: sharing a bed, taking part in a
scene of love and betrayal. Some OMA-designed buildings, like in the terminal for Zeebrugge
(competition, 1989) or the Casa da Musica in Porto (built 2004), seem to be personalities,
through their sculptural form proudly taking their place as strangers, just arrived in a city or
at the shore. About the sculptural form (a head? an egg? a sort of Zeppelin?) of the Zeebrugge
terminal, Koolhaas writes that it should provoke one to free-associate with successive moods
the mechanical, the industrial, the utilitarian, the abstract, the poetic, the surreal.542 In
8
this project, several metaphors appear that stir such associations: the egg, a metaphor that
already appeared in the early days of OMA as The Egg of Columbus,543 a swimming pool,
a recurring theme in many of Koolhaass projects, the metropolitan feel of the large entry
hall of the terminal. In such architectural projects, metaphors appear as fragments, stirring
associations, but in other projects and analyses, especially the ones on a larger scale, they serve
as a framework through which a design is approached. In Delirious New York, the archipelago
of blocks was a metaphor that indeed informed the content and design of the book, while
it re-emerged in urban design projects by OMA. The ruin is another metaphor present in
Koolhaass world-view. It emerges in Delirious New York in the ruins of Dreamland on Coney
Island, a pretext to the final carcass of Manhattanism in the last chapter of Delirious New
York, dramatically entitled Postmortem. In Imagining Nothingness,544 Koolhaas points at sites
190 of nothingness, like the voids caused by bombing in Berlin and Rotterdam, or the ruins of 191
Pompeii, those urban forms lacking walls and roofs. Such urban ruins reveal for him a poetic, 9

surreal essence of urbanity. Instead of a failure of the city, such sites, according to Koolhaas,
offer opportunities for new scenarios. Urban studies conducted by OMA often make use of
metaphor as an analytical tool; for example the studies on density in the Netherlands of 1996,
in which the culture of congestion and the Manhattan grid were used to provoke thoughts
about spatial planning and density in the Netherlands.545 The idea of metaphoric planning,
as introduced in Delirious New York, can be understood in this light. The metaphor as a key
notion in urban projects can be seen as an alternative to the rigid nature of traditional master
planning. Not the rational approach of the Western European urban planners, but imagina-
tion stands at the source of this kind of urbanism. The metaphor offers a dynamic framework
in which the outcome of design can be influenced by circumstances and chance. Instead of
aiming for a fixed result, the metaphorical planner allows the work to react to the momentary,
542 O.M.A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S.M.L,XL, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam/ The Monacelli Press, New
York 1995, p. 584
543 In 1973, Elia Zenghelis designed The Egg of Columbus Center for a site on Manhattan. The egg appeared
as well on the drawing that accompanied the manifesto for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975.
IN itself already a reference, the image of the egg shows remarkable similarity to the cracked egg on Dalis
painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL
Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008, p.26
544 Rem Koolhaas, Imagining Nothingness, in in S.M.L,XL, The Monacelli Press, New York 1995, pp. 198-203 8 Casa da Musica in Porto (2004). The building as a character, taking place as a stranger
545 Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, in the city.
2008, p 233 9 Casa da Musica, Roof terrace

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making alternative situations possible. For Koolhaas, such metaphors serve as artistic and
critical starting points for design, which can then be rationally developed into new spatial 4.3.3 Prescription in architectural education
scenarios. Even the future past of cities can be part of such scenarios: more important than
the design of cities, states Koolhaas, is the design of their decay.546 Metaphorical planning, The discussion of radical artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary scenario
in this way implies a dynamic view on time. It allows leaps in time flashbacks and flashes planning, and the work of Rem Koolhaas/OMA has shown that a prescriptive approach to
forward like the narrative in a novel or film script can be non-chronological to enhance sus- architecture and urbanism entails the construction of an artistic framework a chronotope
pense. The metaphor serves as an intellectual filter, through which a critical understanding of as an intellectual filter through which to discover, reveal and construct the world. How,
contemporary culture is both analysed and expressed, and through which new urban and ar- then, can architects be educated if their profession entails much more than the craft of archi-
chitectural situations are imagined. We might argue, then, that the metaphor as a framework tectural design? How can architectural education stimulate students to take a critical stance
for architectural projects is an instrumental outcome of the all-encompassing chronotope towards reality, and to make artistic use of real and imagined situations? How can students of
of Koolhaass work: a dynamic view on time, in which past, present and future can coincide architecture be taught to be the writers of new spatial scenarios? Like Bernard Tschumi, Rem
in the moment, the contemporary, giving way to spatial scenarios: fragmented, composed Koolhaas also taught at the Architectural Association in London in the 1970s. The Diploma
of both real and imagined scripts, held together by metaphors and a critical understanding Unit he conducted was directly influenced by the studies for Delirious New York, which were
of the (sur)real. It is the character of the vagabond that offers the point of view from which done in the years before. The metropolitan ideal and life style,549 was the key subject to be
Koolhaas scours the earth,547 much like the situationists attempted to read the city through explored through radical scenarios. The aim of the unit was to rediscover and develop a form
their wanderings.548 The difference is that Koolhaas not only reads the contemporary urban of urbanism which makes use of new types of architectural scenarios . . .550 Thus, traditional
condition, but also writes it, in the sense of prescribing its imagined scenarios. This idea of master planning and building design made way for a different approach, in which students
the architect as an author of contemporary culture is aptly expressed by the words of Georges were asked to critically react on urban phenomena. Also, surrealist techniques entered teach-
Perec, quoted at the beginning of this chapter: To cover the world, to cross it in every direc- ing: for example, the Tektonik sculptures of Malevich served as analytical models to develop
tion . . . perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which . . . we ourselves are architectural volumes without predetermined programmes or materiality.551 The cadavre
the authors. exquis appeared in design exercises, for example by the assemblage of independent students
designs as fragments in a larger architectural project, while the use of metaphor was intro-
192 duced in relation to studies on materiality and detail, in order to develop eloquent details.552 193
Teaching at the AA not only allowed Koolhaas to further develop themes of his interest, but
also offered students new ways to study architecture. First, the scope of architectural educa-
tion was enlarged to societal issues such as urban density and the metropolitan life style.
Students were asked not only to develop realistic designs, but to relate their design proposals
to an ideological position. Projects could also be critical reactions to reality, and act as radical
architectural theorems rather than buildable designs.553 In this way, students were taught to
take a critical stance towards urban phenomena and to use their design skills in addressing
ideological questions. Second, the use of methods derived from (surrealist) literature stimu-
lated students to investigate the productive uncertainty of imagination.

In the late 1990s, Rem Koolhaas embarked on another teaching project, this time hosted by
the Harvard Design School. In this Project on the City, the aim was to investigate chang-

549 Prospectus of the Architectural Association 1973-1974, as cited in: Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas
/ OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008, p.47
550 Ibidem, pp.48-49
551 Roberto Gargiani, p. 49-50
546 Ibidem, p.101 552 Prospectus of the Architectural Association 1977-1978, as cited in: Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas
547 AMO/OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Content, Taschen, Kln, 2004, p.16 / OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press/ Routledge, Lausanne, 2008, p. 55. Gargiani explains: ..in
548 In fact, the influence of Situationist thought on the book Content should not be underestimated: not 1977-78, [Koolhaas and Zenghelis] called for a study of technical details with the aim of experiment-
coincidentally, the logo on the cover shows striking resemblance to the autograph that Constant Nieuwenhuijs ing with the unexpressed metaphorical potential of materials and construction.
signed his works with. AMO/OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Content, Taschen, Kln, 2004, Cover, p. 16, 18, 21. 553 Ibidem, p. 49

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ing urban conditions in the world.554 Here, students of architecture, landscape architecture
and urbanism took on the role of the reporter, travelling to conduct research on site. Like the
young Koolhaas in New York, students set out to formulate hypotheses concerning new urban
phenomena. The first project, running in 1996-1997, focused on the rapid urbanization taking
place in the Chinese Pearl River Delta, and attempted to map out aspects of ideology, money,
architecture and landscape. Another project studied the phenomenon of shopping and its
influence on urban developments in fast-growing urban regions.555 In Great Leap Forward, the
outcome of the Pearl River Delta studies, a number of copyrighted terms are introduced,
which, according to Koolhaas represent the beginning of a conceptual framework to describe
and interpret the contemporary urban condition.556 As a literary cadavre exquis, together, the
definitions of the terms the individual students proposed form the overarching term describ-
ing the Pearl River Deltas urban condition: the COED City of Exacerbated Difference.557 In
these projects, teaching architecture no longer necessarily resulted in architectural designs.
Indeed, the student of architecture is stimulated to take on another role, scouring the earth
in an attempt to grasp developments that seem beyond comprehension, speculating on the
consequences for the design professions. In order to handle the scope of such research pro-
jects, students should indeed construct and intellectual framework as a filter through which 1
to view their subject. This framework can be thematic (like landscape, ideology or infrastruc-
ture), but also metaphorical or speculative.

In my own teaching at Delft University of Technology, I have attempted to experiment with


prescriptive design approaches. That is, I have tried to encourage students to investigate the
194 field of tension between reality and imagination, to work with chance, to become aware of the 195
aspect of time in architectural design, and to develop urban and architectural scenarios from
a critical view on contemporary conditions. In the diploma studio Public Realm, which inves-
tigated the banks of the IJ River in Amsterdam,558 Winfried Zwier and Bart Wigger conducted
a theoretical study on the phenomenon of gentrification, before developing a method to
compare different radical urban scenarios by means of analogy. Their advertisement posters
554 Program of the Harvard Design School, http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/people/faculty/koolhaas/
courses.html, accessed 21-12-2010
555 The results of these projects were published as: Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas
and Sze Tsung Leong (eds.) Project on the City 1- Great Leap Forward, Taschen, Kln / Harvard Design School,
Cambridge MA, 2001; Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong (eds., Project
on the City 2 - Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Taschen, Kln / Harvard Design School, Cambridge
MA, 2002 2
556 Rem Koolhaas, introduction to : Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze Tsung
Leong (eds.) Project on the City 1- Great Leap Forward, Taschen, Kln / Harvard Design School, Cambridge
MA, 2001, p.28
557 Copyrighted, that is. Therefore, I refer to the definition as presented in Great Leap Forward: ..the
CITY OF EXACERBATED DIFFERENCE (COED) .. is based on the greatest possible difference of its
parts- complementary or competitive. In a climate of permanent strategic panic, what count in the CITY
OF EXACERBATED DIFFERENCE is not the methodical creation of the idea, but the opportunistic
exploitation of flukes, accidents, and imperfections.. , Ibidem, p.29
558 The diploma studio Public Realm at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft is organized by Susanne
Komossa and myself. The group that studied the IJ-banks was tutored by myself, Marten de Jong and Jan 1+2 Public Realm diploma studio IJ-banks Amsterdam 2005-2006, scenarios presented
Engels (tutor building technology) in 2005-2006. as advertisements, Winfried Zwier and Bart Wigger.

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imagined extreme developments concerning the relationship between Amsterdam-North
and the historical urban core of Amsterdam south of the IJ. One of these scenarios departed
from the statement that the historical core of Amsterdam is a museum, rather than a living
city. The scenario involves a protective dome on top of the historical core, while the part of
Amsterdam north of the IJ becomes a vibrant, urban hub of high density. Another scenario
is built around the idea that the IJ can be a space of leisure. In this scenario, the passage for
freight ships is diverted, and the IJ becomes a recreational lake. This scenario inverts the focus
of urban life in Amsterdam: the city that used to turn its back to the IJ, focusing on the small
scale of the canals, now turns towards the IJ, which becomes a sort of central park. One of the
most extreme scenarios the students made is AmsterDAM, in which a huge concrete dam is
placed in the IJ, like a Berlin wall separating the two parts of the city, which, over a course
3
of some 20 years, would develop independently. After such a period of time, the city would
be reunited, and the North would be explored as the long hidden treasure of Amsterdam.
After presenting these scenarios in the form of advertisements, Wigger and Zwier critically
investigated the social and spatial implications of the subsequent imagined futures. With the
knowledge deriving from this exercise, a proposal was done for a development in time of the
IJ-banks. Their docking strip on the northern IJ-bank offered a framework for temporary
and permanent public programmes.

The Public Realm studio of 2006-2007 focused on an industrial area, the Binckhorst,559 close
to the city centre of The Hague. According to The Hague municipality, this site is to become
a new urban quarter with mixed used programmes and high-quality standards. The Public
196 Realm studio moved into the former Caballero factory560 and set out to scour the surface of 197
the Binckhorst. Here, prescriptive techniques were at stake at different levels; in the making of
a film, in the use of fictive characters for site interpretation, and in the development of urban
scenes and scenarios. The first impressions of the group were presented in a film: a talk show,
hosted in the Caballero factory, featuring student reporters on various sites in the area. After
this first exercise in scriptwriting, characters were added to their site interpretation. Adopt-
ing the character of an industrialist, a dweller, a historian or a clergyman, students studied 4
a number of sites (or scenes) in the Binckhorst area from different points of view, investigat-
ing such issues as functionality, recreation, rituals and frames and structures. They discov-
ered that by looking through a specific lens, they started to notice quite different phenomena
than expected. The site research then continued by involving real characters in the project.
A night was spent walking through the Binckhorst area with a policeman, getting to know
about crime scenes and informal economic activities taking place, interviews were held with
the churchgoers of an obscure religious community that held its services in the Binckhorst,
and one student spent 24 hours at a gas station, investigating the social practices and rituals

3 Public Realm diploma studio Binckhorst (2006-2007), scriptive techniques in site interpreta-
559 The diploma studio Public Realm 2006-2007, studying the Binckhorst, was tutored by myself and tion: site reading from the point of view of another character.
Sebastiaan Veldhuisen, while Jan Engels guided the students in the technological elaboration of their
4 Public Realm diploma studio Binckhorst (2006-2007), design proposal for the re-creation of
design.
560 By now, the factory is in use as a creative hub, accommodating companies working in the creative the asphalt factory; the dramatic scene of the mourning centre. Wim Kornman, 2007
sector. At the time of the studio, the refurbishment of the factory was still in a construction phase. The
municipality kindly offered us a space in the building to function as an in situ studio.

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of car drivers coming and going, taking breaks, polishing their cars, showing off, talking on
their phones or meeting each other.
Together, the students read the Binckhorst as a series of objets-trouvs, and found fascinat-
ing correlations between sites, characters and programmes. The individual design work of
the students continued on this track. Mauro Lugaresi proposed an alternative to a master
plan for the area, designating sites to be un-planned and de-regulated rather than the other
way around. In this way, space was provided for marginal use. The elevated highway crossing
the area in Lugaresis proposalwould have a two-fold result: first, the Binckhorst was given
importance for the city through its high-quality infrastructure, improving the citys connec-
tion to the national highway network, while below the highway, a covered space was created,
which could accommodate the church congregation, and which would also offer unplanned,
5a
hidden spaces, in which marginal practices could take place. Wim Kornman continued on
the theme of the spatial object-trouv, while using play and chance, concepts he studied with
the Homo Ludens theory of Johan Huizinga561 in mind, as key factors in the development of his
design. The big asphalt factory was read by Kornman through the lens of theatre: for him, the
site, with its huge concrete constructions and piles of sand, had enormous dramatic potential.
This potential was used by proposing another programme on the factory site, indeed, a dra-
matic one of a mourning centre, connected to the nearby graveyard. The concrete structures
were re-created as mourning chambers, while the sequence of industrial spaces gave way to
a dramatic mourning ritual.

The last example I will discuss here is a method for site research and design by means of
198 scriptwriting techniques. When asked to be the course director of an international summer 5b 199
school in Macedonia in 2009,562 to address issues of sustainability, I developed, together with
Sebas Veldhuisen, the educational strategy Terristories, which challenges designers to reach
an awareness of the city and the landscape as communicating personalities.563 The goal of the
summer school was first of all to raise environmental awareness of different scales in students
of architecture, and to generate enthusiasm for such themes through a creative, interdiscipli-
nary approach. We proposed Terristories as an educational method with which to address the

561 For his theory thesis, Wim Kornman got hold of the first edition of Johan Huizinga: Homo Ludens.
Proeve eener bepaling van het spelelement der cultuur, H.D. Tjeenk Willink, Haarlem 1938. See also note 428 of
this chapter.
562 The Terristories workshop was initiated and directed by Klaske Havik (TU Delft), Sebastiaan
Veldhuisen (Builddesk sustainable development, Delft) and Lorin Niculae (Ion Mincu University, 6b
Bucarest) by invitation of the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, and co-tutored by Slobodan Velevski,
Marija Mano Velevska, Bojan Karanakov, Filip Cenovski and Mihaljo Zinoski of the Faculty of Architec-
ture in Skopje. A report of this Summer School appeared in: OASE#80 On Territories, Tom Avermaete,
Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds (editors), NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2009, pp. 70-76 The Terristories
method was presented at the conference Teaching a new Environmental Culture: The Environment
as a Question of Architectural Education , European Association for Architectural Eductation, Nicosia,
Cyprus May 2010.
5a+b Terristories Summer School, Macedonia 2009, proposed interventions in the town of Kriva
563 The philosopher Karsten Harries suggests that human beings have a psychological need to be
connected to their environment. He speaks of cities and landscapes as communicating personalities. Palanka, enhancing social cohesion through public spaces along the river banks.
Lecture in TU Delft, Delft School of Design, March 13th, 2009. See also Karsten Harries, The Ethical 6a+b Terristories Summer School 2009, reading of the life cyclic of the element Earth, showing the
Function of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997. reciprocity of scales, the local and the territory.

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complexity of sustainable design by looking at local conditions as part of the greater territory.
By using storytelling as a tool, local specificities are revealed and new possibilities for embed-
ded environmental design are created. Terristories was aimed at connecting awareness of the
sources of the earth (territory) to literary instruments (stories). A story, indeed, allows us to
look from the perspective of another character, to observe and describe local characteristics,
and to use narrative as a means to connect activities and events to the spatial setting of the
territory. In this way, the use of scriptive instruments provided a means for various scales and
viewpoints to come together, and offered a playful and productive way to address sustainabil-
ity. The basic idea of a Terristory is that the students explore their site and its larger territory
from the perspective of different characters. Depending on the design task at hand, these
characters can be stakeholders in a project, but also environmental elements such as water or
7
wood. The first task is to find a trace of the character on all scales. The trace can be represented
by an object taken from the site, a sketch or a text. Stories are then composed in which the
life cycle of the characters, future events and possible needs and demands for the site and
the territory can be imagined. This multi-perspectival analysis generates a broader and more
inclusive understanding of the reciprocity of scales and environmental characteristics of the
project, and provides the stepping stone for integrated design solutions.

Kriva Palanka, the given site for the summer school, is a town in the northeast of the former
Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, close to the Bulgarian border. The town is located along
the Kriva Reka River, in a predominantly agricultural mountainous landscape, currently suf-
fering from a number of social and ecological problems. Mining activities, for example, have
200 caused a rather heavy pollution of the river, which has caused the town to turn its back on the 201
river banks. The workshop has been an attempt to address such questions, and to raise envi- 8

ronmental awareness of different scales to architecture students, by investigating the charac-


ters of water, earth, light, wood and man in regard to the specific sites and landscape of Kriva
Palanka. First, students used storytelling techniques to explore the territory of Kriva Palanka,
looking through the eyes of their character, whether an inhabitant of the town or a more
abstract notion such as light. These literary analyses of the territory were translated to project
briefs and ambitions on different scales. For example, one group used a fictional family com-
posed of different age groups to search for ways to enhance social interaction in Kriva Palanka.
Another group, studying earth, elaborated their conceptual dialogues between man and
earth, proposing three land art interventions to explore this relationship. The resulting Terris-
tories for Kriva Palanka offered proposals for spatial interventions for specific sites throughout
the town of Kriva Palanka and the surrounding region. The proposals included, for example,
playgrounds for children, meeting places and market stalls, but they also took into account the 9
life cycle of materials and their influence on the landscape. The water group, for example,
proposed to make the river banks livelier by means of a general strategy for cleaning the river,
and a number of site-specific designs for the riverbanks. Through this intensive workshop,
the students have become acquainted with thinking, moving and designing through differ- 7 Terristories Summer School 2009, model group of light.
ent scales and from different perspectives. The storytelling technique taught the students to 8 Terristories Summer School 2009, the river as a character. Models for small interventions
develop an awareness for sensory perception of materials and details of the territory. Further, at the river banks.
they developed an awareness of the life cycle of materials by means of imagining the mate- 9 Exhibition of the five terristories in a large book, presented to the local authorities in
Kriva Palanka.

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rial as a living character: where did the material come from, how has it been transformed
or produced for human use, how will it age? Finally, by means of working with characters,
replacing oneself in the mind of another character, with a different background, lifestyle and
other incentives, they were encouraged to shift their gaze.

At first sight, the above mentioned educational projects couldnt be more different from each
other. The radical scenarios for the IJ-banks seem far removed from the re-creations in the
Binckhorst, or the sensitive, embedded reading of site-specific characters in the Macedonian
workshop. However, they are strongly connected in their approach: they depart from a critical
reading of the urban or territorial conditions at hand, opening their view to other disciplines
rather than limiting themselves to a mere spatial analysis, and using prescriptive techniques
to develop scenarios. In each case, students had to develop an intellectual framework, as a
selective filter for their investigations. In the case of the IJ scenarios, a prescriptive chronotope
was chosen to critically imagine possible futures: the four proposals were made by means of
a limiting space-time construction, which allowed radical positions to be taken as a form of
critique. The Terristories project, on the other hand, departed from a cyclical concept of time,
in relation to a rooted understanding of place, in which the reciprocity of scales was at stake.
In the Binckhorst project, the framework was thematically defined after theoretical explora-
tions of (surrealistic) themes such as spontaneity, play and chance. What I have intended to
show in the last part of this chapter is that prescription can be used as an educational ap-
proach, in which techniques of scriptwriting stimulate the critical thinking and making of
urban and architectural scenes. The notions discovered in literary prescriptions, such as the
202 delicate balance between reality and imagination, as well as the use of selective mechanisms 203
such as a chronotope to construct an intellectual filter guiding the artistic production, have
been brought into consideration concerning urban spatial questions in the second part of this
chapter. Special attention has been devoted to the role of time as an aspect of uncertainty in
prescribing spatial scenarios. This uncertainty, which might inhibit processes of traditional,
functionalist master planning, is here seen as productive factor for design. In architectural
and urban design, a prescriptive approach entails the development of alternative scenarios,
based on a critical reading of the contemporary conditions, and making use of scriptive tech-
niques that allow the designer to shift his gaze to address the multi-perspectival complexity
of design. Let me conclude with a proposal by Henri Lefebvre, written in The Urban Revolution
in 1970:
Rather than constructing a model, critical reflection provides an orientation, which opens
pathways and reveals a horizon. That is what I am proposing . . . not so much to construct a
model of the urban as to open a pathway towards it.564 In this chapter I have argued that a
prescriptive approach to architectural and urban design indeed offers such a pathway, one
that can be used by critical thinkers, professional spatial designers and students alike.

564 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis/London 2003, p.
66 [La Rvolution urbaine, Editions Gallimard, Paris 1970]

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5 Arrival 5.1 The triple bridge in use
5.1.1 explorations:
three fields, three paths

This chapter reflects on the spatial composition the triple bridge of this work
by drawing on its different directions, their commonalities and their differences,
and by discussing their validity for discourse, education and practice. I will start by
rephrasing the conclusions of description, transcription and prescription, discuss
how these paths have bridged the gaps that I introduced in the first chapter, Depar-
ture. I will then discuss the connections between these paths and the connections
this text makes to other texts in other words, the intertextuality that is at stake.
Then, I will make some distinctions concerning the position and the order of the
three elaborations of this scriptive approach. The second section of this chapter
will highlight the critical position I have intended to take with this work, regard-
ing architectural discourse, education and practice. In regard to discourse, this
urban literacy approach offers a dimension of spatial thought that refrains from
stylistic or normative categorizations; while the notions developed in this work
204 offer creative tools for architectural education and also provides new perspectives 205
for architects and other spatial designers. In the last section, I will shine a light on
the practical potential of the theoretical framework that I have built up through this
work. Without limiting its possibilities for other architectural fields, I choose to
focus on the public realm, especially in relation to urban regeneration projects, as
one of todays most urgent tasks. The approach that this work proposes, can offer
productive ways to address todays questions concerning the social and experien-
tial aspects of architecture and the city. Finally, the literary bridge makes it possi-
ble to introduce another perspective not only to think about architecture, but also
to teach and to practice it.

First, the quest in this work was to address the gap between the discourse of archi-
tecture and its experience; in other words, the paradox that architecture as con-
ceived, drawn and discussed, hardly ever coincides with architecture as encoun-
tered in real life. The main argument in the chapter Description is that the capacity
of literary writers and poets to closely observe and evocatively describe mans
relation to architecture and the city, offers great potential to address experiential
issues in architectural practice and education. In the chapter Description, I have
therefore started from the viewpoint of literature, and set out to define what evoca-
tive description of space in literature entails by actually describing its manifesta-
tion in various literary sources. Through a number of evocative literary descrip-
tions, I have shown how writers employ close observation of spatial phenomena,
Arrival ~ Urban Literacy
how they stress emotional qualities of space by focusing on sensory perceptions, insight gives way to further thoughts about architecture, which, in this way, is seen
and how architecture in literature is intrinsically connected to atmosphere. One more as a process than as an object a process in which various events can unfold
crucial advantage of the use of literature to understand the experience of architec- in time, like in a literary narrative. Indeed, it is the literary notion of narrative that
ture is that it makes it possible to overcome the hegemony of the image: literary allows aspects of spatial setting, time and event to be brought together. Connecting
descriptions evoke responses to all senses, not only vision. In a time when archi- the spatial practices of everyday life to the idea of narrative, Michel de Certeau was
tecture is dominated by the image, it is important to offer alternative perspectives, an important voice in the chapter Transcription, while the relation between time,
which raise an awareness of the other sensory aspects that architecture essentially narration and event has been discussed through the viewpoint of Paul Ricoeur.
entails. My argument concerning the evocative capacity of literary description has Richard Sennetts idea of narrative space was also addressed. The chapter Tran-
been framed by a number of important theoretical positions regarding the experi- scription also addresses the dynamic character of literature, which is also explored,
ential aspects of architecture. For instance, the concept of lived space as defined by for instance, in the experimental work of the Oulipo group, who used rules and
Henri Lefebvre has been brought to the fore, while philosophical views were pro- constraints in a productive way to reach new, potential literature. Here, the process
vided by phenomenological theory, placing the body at the centre of spatial percep- of writing itself is the subject of study and exploration much like architects have
tion. The personal attachment of people to place and its meaning in spatial thought investigated the potentiality of the process of architecture by means of critical
and philosophy has been touched upon by discussing the work of Edward S. Casey analysis, deconstruction or transformation. The chapter shows how architects such
and Yi-Fu Tuan, while architectural considerations regarding these themes have as Daniel Libeskind and Peter Eisenman, and specifically Bernard Tschumi, have
been brought into play by the writings of Christian Norbergh-Schulz and Juhani experimented with such ideas as the process of architecture, the dynamics between
Pallasmaa. By connecting insights from the domain of literature to the theoretical architecture and its use, and have attempted to transcribe notions from other
discourse on architectural experience, I have argued that developing the skill of disciplines to architecture. While Bernard Tschumi used the experimental char-
evocative description allows architects to take a receptive attitude to architectures acter of transcription to invent new architectural compositions, the crucial benefit
experiential potential. A descriptive approach can thus teach architects to pay from transcriptive experiments in his work lies in the bringing together of space,
close attention to materiality, sensory perception, atmosphere and memory in movement and event. This made it possible to see architecture as an essentially
other words, to the lived qualities that architecture and the city can entail. In site social product, and architectural design as a social act. The chapter Transcrip-
206 interpretation, such an approach implies that site-specific characteristics regard- tion thus ultimately points out the idea that architecture is never neutral, that it is 207
ing sensory perception and atmosphere can be mapped, connecting various scales, intrinsically related to its use and interpretation, and that experimental practices
from urban structure to details. Consequently, I have shown how proposals for embroidering on literary examples provide the potential for productive exchanges
architectural and urban interventions can take into account such perceptive between architect and user, and between disciplines.
and atmospherical qualities. In the last part of the chapter Description, the dis-
cussion of both Steven Holls work and educational experiments has shown a Third, the work dealt with the field of tension between reality and imagintion,
number of possible operational modes for evocative description in architectural and, consequently, between permanence and temporality: architects and plan-
design. ners design spatial futures based on an existing reality, while the influence of
time cannot be totally foreseen. Design, therefore, is also an act of speculation.
Second, the work stressed the gap between the design of architecture and its use, Embedded in statements about the imagined future is thus a critique of the present
between the autonomy of architectural design and the multiple interpretations that reality. Architects need to position themselves vis--vis this aspect of inde-
the activities taking place within it can generate. It discussed the role of architec- teminacy and seek an appropriate balance between reality and imagination. This
ture as a setting for human life, connecting spaces, people and activities. It argues balance between reality and imagination is discussed in the chapter Prescription
that if architecture gains meaning through its use, architecture is always subject by reflecting on Edward Sojas notion of real-and-imagined places, as well as on
to interpretation. The interactivity in literature between writer and reader, in recent research regarding the aspect of indeterminacy in architecture. The concept
that sense, also counts for the architect and the user or perceiver of architectural of chronotope, introduced by Mikhail Bakthin as a framework connecting space
space. Transcription, as argued in this chapter, provides an approach to address- and time in a work of literature, has come to the fore as an instrument that could
ing this interactivity, while allowing productive exchanges between disciplines. also be of use to discuss such architectural positions regarding space and time.
Before showing how architects explored this dynamic connection between archi- This spatio-temporal framework, which functions as a filter through which the
tecture and its use, I brought to the fore the work of a number of theorists who ingredients of a story (spatial settings, characters, events) are filtered, can be of
have addressed the social dimension of space. I have continued to discuss the work use in architecture and urban planning, in which imaginative thinking about new
Henri Lefebvre, specifically his statement that space is socially produced. This spatial and temporal realities is at stake. As examples, the chronotopes underlying
Arrival ~ Urban Literacy
the work of architects John Hejduk and Aldo Rossi have been placed in this light, provided the tools to bring together theories about the perception of architecture,
showing that both architects take different positions regarding the role of time, social spatial practices and critical artistic production. Together, they have allowed
while consciously positioning their work in terms of looking at reality and using me to explore the potential use of literary concepts in architectural design and
imagination to react upon it. Literary writers, I showed in the chapter Prescrip- education. The three scriptive notions that I have introduced here are by no means
tion, have emphasized this intriguing balance between reality and imagination, as to be understood as inclusive, nor should they be read as three separate paths.
well as the role of indeterminacy in this regard. For example by using architectural Coming back to the metaphor of the bridge, the three branches work together
metaphors to create radical perspectives of future worlds, which allowed liter- in constructing the space of the bridge itself, while here and there, connections
ary writers to speculate on the future and criticize reality. Making a comparison between the branches, as well as openings to other literary fields of investigation
to the field of architecture, the radical scenarios of groups such as Archigram and can be found. In that sense, the work is saturated with references both within and
Superstudio come to mind. The chapter thus highlights how, on the one hand, outside the work itself. As Julia Kristevas notion of intertextuality565 suggests, a text
radical architecture practices in the 1960s and 1970s proposed radical speculations does not exist in isolation, on the contrary, through direct and hidden references
on spatial futures, while on the other hand more recent urban planning practices and quotes, a text is built up out of many other fragments of texts. In this particular
make use of scenario techniques to deal with the multiplicity of potential alterna- work, it is clear that many references are made to texts from various fields: literary,
tive futures. Others claim that the demarcation lines between reality and imagina- philosophical, sociological, artistic, etcetera. The text is thus stratified, it is com-
tion are often hard to distinguish. I have discussed how the magic realist writers posed of layers. Behind the layer of the argument itself, for instance, is the layer
pondered on the aspects of myth and illusion in existing reality. In the work of John of the direct quotations: fragments of other texts, literary or theoretical, literally
Hejduk, for instance, one indeed finds a similar fusion between reality and imagi- quoted in the very body of this work, taking part in the construction of the argu-
nation his account of the cities described and depicted in his Masque series could ment. A second line of references is present in the notes, some 160 per chapter,
be characterized as magic-realistic. Also, I have shown how surrealist writers, on referring to sources of, again, both literary and scholarly texts. The notes indi-
the other hand, stressed the role of imagination beyond reality, by deliberately cate the width of the frame of reference that my topic implies: bridging distances
seeking tools with which to address aspects of indeterminacy. Such tools include between different fields, the amount of voices that needed to have their say in and
automatic writing, the cadavre exquis, the narrated dream and other forms of stir- under the text is relatively large. These authors in their turn also refer to others
208 ring imaginative thought such as the paranoid critical method. Continuing archi- for instance, one cannot quote Edward Soja566 without hearing the reverbera- 209
tectural considerations, I discussed the work of Rem Koolhaas in more detail, tions of Lefebvres work, or refer to Jennifer Bloomers Architecture and the Text567
showing how such scriptive tools, ranging from surrealist techniques to scenogra- without indirectly pointing to the works of Joyce and Piranesi, while Joyces Ulysses,
phy and speculation, are used in approaching architecture and the contemporary in turn, points back to Homers epic Odyssee. One piece of text thus cascades into
urban conditions as a kind of fictions that can be analysed and re-written, or newly a river of many other texts, some of which, in the second or third degree of refer-
constructed. ence, may not even be known by the author. There is a role for the reader to dis-
cover such hidden connections and references, and play with this spatial complex-
ity to construct his or her own version of the text. Another layer of intertextuality
can be found within the work itself, since connections between the three paths are
5.1.2 connections: intertextuality established on many levels. Even if each of the chapters can be read separately,
the reader of the whole work will come across a number of themes that reverberate
between them, and that are looked upon from slightly different perspectives. Such
Bringing into play the interactivity between subject and object, author and user, themes include atmosphere, metaphor, temporality, or the search for moments of
and reality and imagination is a challenge for the architectural debate. It is through experience. It is not my intention here to indicate the locations of such intersect-
the looking glass of literature that I have been able to bridge these seemingly binary
oppositions. While the Description chapter highlighted the meticulous descrip- 565 In Julia Kristeva, Word, Dialogue and Novel, (1969), a study on the work of Bakthin, Kristeva
tions that novels and poems can offer of the lived experience of the built environ- introduces the term intertextuality to address the idea that every text contains numerous
ment, the chapter Prescription presented literary accounts of future scenarios and references to other texts, and therefore multiple layers of meaning that are to the reader to
discover or even construct.
critical views of the present world. The notion of Transcription touched upon the
566 Edward Soja, Thirdspace, journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places,
relation between the writer and the text as well as between the text and its reader. Blackwell, Oxford, 1999 [1996]
It thereby introduced the social dynamics of space in literature. The three notions 567 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (s)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University
description transcription and prescription, derived from literature, have thus Press, New Haven/ London 1993

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ing themes indeed, the discovery of these should be part of the joy of reading. lect, the past, present and future, the conceived and the perceived. And it is this
Let me just highlight one theme that resonates though the whole work: the idea of ambiguity, this coexistence of differences that make up the extraordinary, which is
moments of architectural experience. In the chapter Description, the extraor- found in literature: in the poets unusual images and his discovery of universality in
dinary moment of architectural experience is discussed in the context of phe- the details, in the experimental complexity of Joyce and Danielewski, in the surre-
nomenology: the moment of architectural experience is the moment when space alists quest for the merging of dream and reality, in the search for the marvellous
is experienced directly, before reflection. Only from a receptive state of openness of the magic realists. It is indeed in literature that vivid accounts of such moments
and innocence is one able to capture such moments, according to theorists such as of architecture can be found, and through a literary gaze that the passages to con-
Yi-Fu Tuan and Gaston Bachelard. This receptivity, as I argue in this chapter, is a struct and experience them can be discovered.
quality of literary writers, and specifically of poets. The poetic moment of spatial
experience is a complex moment when the subject-object relation becomes revers-
ible, as if it is the object or the space itself that acts: stirring the imagination of
the observer. Then, the subjective observer becomes the object that is touched. 5.1.3 distinctions:
While in the chapter Description, the moment of experience is thus defined by reading, telling, writing places
the receptivity of the observer and by a momentary inversion between subject
and object, in the chapter Transcription temporality is at stake when defining the
moment of experience. Following the discussion of spatial practice and narrative The three chapters can be read separately each connects the disciplines of archi-
by Michel de Certeau and Paul Ricoeur, narrative offers the possibility for past, tecture and literature in its own way, providing a slightly different perspective
present and future to coincide. Intersections of different temporalities, as well and touching upon different theories. Even though the order of the chapters is
as intersections of the reader and the writer are at stake here. Taken to architec- non-hierarchical the chapter Prescription, for example, can be read without the
ture, these intersections between seemingly conflicting notions lead to a dynamic knowledge of Description there is of course a reason for their order of appear-
idea of architecture, in which the moment of intense architectural experience is ance. Between the lines of the discussion on the three notions and the three para-
triggered by the event, the unusual activity that can take place in space. Architect doxes they address, the argument at large, concerning the experiential qualities
210 Bernard Tschumi speaks of the moment of architecture as a moment when the of architecture that can be accessed through literature, is constructed in three 211
borders between such categories as intuition and intellect, concept and experi- successive steps: starting from the fundamental aspect of lived experience, via
ence, real and ideal, are transgressed. The chapter Prescription discusses not the the complex field of social spatial practices, to the critical and imaginative. Even
experience of such moments, but rather their creation. For instance, the Situation- though each of the notions is applicable in all stages and on all scales of design,
ist International group, discussed in this chapter as an exemplary prescriptive these steps, in some way, are also steps in scale. Presumably, Description is the
practice, aimed to create situations. Such situations are indeed moments that most detailed of the three branches, dealing with architectures materiality, the
offer an other experience of urban place. The notion of chronotope, discussed in human experience and the human scale. The chapter offers literary descriptions
the context of the work of architects Rossi, Hejduk and Koolhaas, makes it possible of architectural spaces that are personal accounts of these spaces experienced
to address this idea of moments in architectural experience. The notion of moment and lived-through by the literary character or by the writer or poet. In other words,
also comes to the fore in the discussion of Koolhaass work, in which indeed dif- what is at stake here is the relation between architecture in its physical appear-
ferent temporalities merge in an all-encompassing contemporality. Throughout ance and the individual perceiver. This is not to say that this issue is limited to the
the three chapters, it thus becomes clear that there is more to the coming together private, individual domain. On the contrary, much like the literary descriptions
of different temporal experiences, of detail and whole, of maker and perceiver, of architecture, such perceptions can take on universal value, as has been noted in
of intuition and intellect. This intersection constitutes precisely the moment of the chapter through the discussion on trans-subjectivity in poetry. Description,
extraordinary architectural experience, which is in that sense much like moments more than the other chapters, is the place to read, as an individual act: the intimacy
of intense love or moments of scientific discovery: for a moment, past and future between the book and the reader, the intimacy between the materiality, the smells
are both there, fading within the moment. Detail and whole, intuition and intellect and the atmospheres of architecture, similar but never experienced exactly the
all come together into the very moment of intense experience. Indeed, read in this same for each individual. The chapter Transcription, then, moves to the street, to
way, this whole work can be seen to centre on this idea of the moment of intense the public spaces where social activity takes place. In that sense, Transcription is
architectural experience. It is a moment in which contradictory elements coincide: the most urban part of the bridge, allowing people to meet, offering narrative as a
the subject and the object, the individual and the collective, intuition and intel- concept in which events can unfold in space and time. The urban space is the space

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5.2. The river: reflections
of multiple narratives, of interpretation, of interaction. Transcription, then, is
the place to talk. It states that if space is socially produced, then architecture has
a role in creating the conditions for social exchange. A transcriptive approach to
architectural design thus implies the making of telling places. Finally, Prescrip-
tion moves to a much larger scale. Here, the idea of a world-view is at stake; the 5.2.1 opening perspectives: discourse
view on reality and imagined futures. In Prescription, details matter if they stand
for a larger story, much like the highly individual use of chance by the surrealists
was also a search for something larger: the universal power of the imagination. In In this work, I have tried to find a way around the ways architecture is generally
Prescriptive design approaches, as opposed to the Descriptive, place does not play theorized a way around stylistic or normative categorization, isms or chrono-
such a large role as a focal point for design. The observations concerning physical logical periodization. If the famous Vitruvian triad of firmitas, venusitas en utilitas
sites are rather subject to selective filtering, generating themes and metaphors for was meant to express three interconnected qualities that each work of architecture
the construction of larger stories, claiming validity over much larger domains. If should embody, architectural discourse seemed too often to regard these notions as
prescription entails the revealing of imaginative powers and the construction of separating, differentiating categories of architecture. The idea of firmitas has been
new spatial stories, it is pre-eminently the place to write. associated with constructivist and high-tech architecture, utilitas has been said to
be the main concern for functionalist architects, while venustas has been connected
The bridge thus offers pathways connecting to different levels of scale, and to dif- to aesthetic movements in architecture. Such categorizations, which divided rather
ferent aspects of literary activity: to read, to tell and to write. These pathways are than connected architectural practices, was propagated through exhibitions high-
intrinsically connected, together forming the meaningful space of the bridge itself. lighting specific isms, such as the famous exhibitions on the International Style
In that context, Jennifer Bloomers remark on the architectural qualities of complex or on deconstructivism in New York.569 Charles Jencks was one of the most influ-
literary works is highly appropriate. She expresses her interest in novels specifi- ential players in this tendency to practice architectural discourse, advocating such
cally those of James Joyce with an almost architectural complexity, which allows ordering in architectural movements. Even in contemporary discourse it is still
the text to be read in multiple ways, establishing relations between parts and fashionable to speak in such terms: super- or hypermodernism, neo-expression-
212 structure or apparatus of the text.568 She states that the meaning of a novel can ism or neo-traditonalism, as Dutch architecture critic Bernard Hulsman presented 213
then be found not only in the narrative itself, but also in the many connections that current developments in Dutch architecture in the national newspapers in recent
the apparatus makes possible. Rephrasing her words in the context of this work years. During my work as an editor for the Dutch architectural review de Architect in
I would state that, indeed, the apparatus of this text, the metaphorical bridge, the early years after the turn of the millennium, I noticed that my appreciation for
offers viewpoints from one part to the others, making connections at different architectural projects had nothing to do with style, isms or other such categories.
levels of scale and meaning. The threefold construction can be regarded as a bridge On the contrary, the most interesting architects, urban planners and landscape
in itself, and simultaneously as three different perspectives that, in turn, accom- architects I have met and interviewed, and whose works I have visited, had quite
modate connections and openings to further exploration. It is through the spatial divergent ideas on architectural aesthetics, but they appeared to have a certain
complexity of this work that it hopefully offers more than just a span between one communality in the way they approached their metier. This had to do with a certain
discipline and the other, more than an introduction of what a literary approach sensitivity to themes that had remained rather hidden in the architectural dis-
to architecture might entail. By means of such operations, the construction of the course of these days: sensory perception, the everyday perspective of users, as well
triad attempts to escape from binary oppositions, and intends to open a debate as issues of uncertainty and temporality. With my work, I have attempted to bring
rather than conclude it. such insights, via the field of literature, into the architectural debate.

Certainly, my attempt to avoid normative of stylistic categorization in architectural


thought is by far not the first. Christopher Alexander, for instance, moved beyond
the discussion of style in his search for architectural and urban patterns in his
seminal book A Pattern Language, offering a view on architecture by means of the
569 The exhibition The International Style was curated by Henry-Russel Hitchcock and Philip
Johnson in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932; The exhibition Deconstructivist
568 Jennifer Bloomer, The Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale Architecture was curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley in the Museum of Modern Art, New
University Press, New Haven / London, 1993, p.145 York, 1988

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patterns of daily spatial practice by users.570 The architects of the Team 10 group 5.2.2 offering directions: education
sought another dimension on architectural thought by thinking about architecture
in terms of social and spatial relations, concentrating on thematic issues such as
everyday-ness.571 Architects such as Alvaro Siza in Portugal and Alvar Aalto in The work also functions as a critique on a lacuna that I have experienced in regular
Finland avoided categorization by taking up positions in between the international architectural education. While issues of programme, function, formal composition
modernism and the vernacular, or between abstraction and ornamentation. Such and image are often emphasized in the curricula of schools of architecture, some
examples indeed show how some architects have managed to shift the gaze with other important themes have been left largely unmentioned: architectural percep-
which architecture is looked at. tion, the role of the user (spatial practices) and the role of time. My framework of
scriptive perspectives offers a threefold educational approach to overcome these
With this work I have thus tried to formulate a dimension of architectural thought gaps, by offering creative tools at different levels of complexity that can be used in
without stranding in styles, standards, norms or recipes, and I have found that different phases of the architectural, urban or landscape design curriculum.
literature offers a way out of such reductive models: through imagination, obser-
vation and the use of literary devices such as (fictive) characters and narratives, Descriptive exercises can encourage students as early as in the first year of study
literary texts can bring to the fore theoretical insights without the limitation of to develop an awareness of the perceptual qualities of architecture, for example
categorization. Via the route of literature, I have thus found a way to address essen- by creative writing exercises addressing the senses. In later years, more complex
tial themes in architecture, to link them to theories from different fields such tasks of site-writing can enrich students understanding of sites as lived places,
as philosophy, behavioural sciences and geography, and to discuss the work of while descriptive tasks regarding their own architectural projects can offer criti-
divergent architects without submitting them to a comparative analysis, or reduc- cal insights regarding their own design decisions. The numerous experiments I
ing them to followers of a movement. Indeed, I have been searching for another have carried out with student projects in Delft and elsewhere showed that students,
frame from which to look at architecture, but also to practice and to teach it. The when challenged to describe tactile and audible aspects of their own design works,
notion of chronotope, as discussed in the chapter Prescription, can be seen as such develop a critical understanding of the role of materiality and detail in the percep-
a frame to make links between works of literature links that are not historical or tion of architecture, and consequently elaborate their designs accordingly. Tran-
214 stylistic, but instead address the relation between spatial and temporal dimensions scriptive tools in education are useful in addressing the role of the user in urban 215
from another perspective. Similarly, I have attempted to provide other viewpoints and architectural space, and allow the inclusion of other perspectives in design.
from which to approach the architectural themes (or paradoxes) at hand. In each First, the notion of narrative helps students to understand the relation between
chapter, I have offered scriptive concepts, which do not exclude each other, but space and the activities that it can allow or provoke. By constructing narratives in
rather constitute a kaleidoscopic platform with viewpoints in different directions relation to their own site analysis and design, students become aware of the diver-
indeed, the space of the bridge itself. Thereby, the whole work intends to focus sity of use and the multiplicity of possible events that spatial settings can offer.
on the opening of multiple perspectives rather than on the closure of a fixed argu- Second, the literary character is a creative tool in addressing the users perspective:
ment. Again, a resonance with Henri Lefebvres work comes to the fore. In The Pro- by imagining how spaces are experienced and used by other characters, students
duction of Space, Lefebvre named his last chapter Openings. Indeed, as Edward reach a better understanding of the conditions their design could offer for dif-
Soja stated, in the radical openness of Lefebvres spatial thinking, there are no ferent types of users. Finally, transcription also involves an experimental aspect:
conclusions that are not also openings.572 the idea of transcription as the construction of another version is a challenging
starting point for exercises dealing with the active relationship between architect
and user, taking into account the other version that the user of a work of architec-
ture produces. Prescriptive courses in architectural education include the design
of scenarios. For instance in the first weeks of a design project, this tool is produc-
tive to open thoughts about uncertainties in terms of technological possibilities,
570 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, New York 1977. use or even the climatological position of a site. In this way, the notion of indeter-
571 For a detailed discussion on TeamXs contribution to architectural discourse see for minacy is brought into play, while the scenarios provide radical stances that can
instance Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel (eds.) Team 10 1953-1981, In search of a Utopia
be discussed, criticized, and elaborated to develop conditions for further design.
of the Present, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2005 and Tom Avermaete Another Modern: The Postwar
Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2005 The surrealist techniques discussed in the Prescription chapter are also used as
572 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, creative tools in architectural education. The idea of automatic writing, which tem-
Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK 1996, p. 9 porally eliminates self-censorship, is a productive tool in brainstorm processes,
Arrival ~ Urban Literacy
while the cadavre exquis as design exercise stimulates teamwork for the unexpected surrealist writers, is a scriptive tool that generates associative connections and
connections that can arise. The paranoid critical method as used by Koolhaas helps metaphors regarding the site at hand. The paranoid critical, likewise derived from
to maintain consistency in creative ideas throughout a project, and to connect all surrealist practices, is a technique that conducts site analysis from a very specific
levels of scale, from the urban and territorial to the architectural detail. Finally, viewpoint, informed by a (fictional) hypothesis or metaphor. This way of site inter-
encouraging the use of metaphors and forms of fiction in site-specific projects pretation can generate extremely precise and focused details that would otherwise
helps to understand and use the marvellous dimension that lies hidden in every have slipped by without being noticed. Such prescriptive site research, departing
single place. from fictional and metaphorical viewpoints, opens up new themes and conditions
for design.

Looking at architectural and urban design through literature offers a great set
5.2.3 positioning fields: of techniques that can be employed in practice at different scales and in differ-
architectural and urban practice ent phases of the design process. The receptive attitude of the poet offers ways to
pay attention to perceptual details and play with the subject-object relationship
through evocation, both in writing and in drawing. The metaphor can be a power-
Besides discourse and education, architectural and urban practice can also benefit ful literary tool creating a clear conceptual point of departure for a project, which
from such a literary viewpoint. Especially now that old codes and models of spatial can guide design decisions. As shown in the chapter Description, Steven Holl
development have become unstable due to the economical instability of the last frequently uses metaphors in his work, which offer guidance for design as well as
few years, another approach to spatial development is needed. Policymakers and recognition for the perceiver of the building. Rem Koolhaas, as discussed in the
project developers are also coming to realize that the rigidity of traditional master Prescription chapter, also proposed metaphorical planning on an urban level
planning and of precise calculations of benefits can no longer be accounted for. in Delirious New York. The metaphor thus offers both a critical tool to read a site
Instead of such fixed planning schemes, another form of practice emerges, in and an artistic tool for design. The literary character can be used in several ways.
which different disciplines operate together and in which attention for spatial Not only can buildings be conceived as characters, indeed in a metaphorical way as
216 practices and for the experience of the public realm is key to success. The Urban several projects by Holl and Koolhaas have shown, character is also a very produc- 217
Literacy approach to spatial developments allows for an integrated design attitude. tive tool to include the users perspective in architecture. For instance, a possible
The three concepts description, transcription and prescription each offer tools for technique is to take on the perspective of another character, so that the designer
practicing architects and planners, which can be used both in site analysis and in for a moment experiences the spatial composition and materiality of the design
architectural and urban design. as if he or she were a future user. From this perspective, design decisions can be
critically evaluated. Especially on an urban scale, narrative is an excellent tool to
For site analysis, the descriptive implies that the multiple layers of a site are use when taking the social dimension of architecture into account. Narrative can
described by means of closely observing phenomenological aspects of a site. be brought into play when confronting the design with the possible uses and events
Various techniques of description can be put into play here. For instance, by con- that it may accommodate. Narrative exercises provide a means to bring together
centrating on a single phenomenon each time in a series of descriptions, and spaces, movements and events. The work of Bernard Tschumi has been discussed
by repeating such descriptive exercises multiple times, it is possible to take into in this context in the chapter Transcription. Scenario is a literary tool that helps
account the experience of the site at different times of the day, under different cir- to imagine multiple possibilities by means of posing what if questions in regard to
cumstances. Another way of generating more knowledge about a site, as has been future developments, while an architectural design itself can also be conceived as a
discussed in the chapter Transcription, is to use existing narratives, which reveal scenario: offing sequences of architectural experiences, frame after frame, moving
the lived account of users and inhabitants. Such narratives can be found in myths, from one spatial setting to the other.
in stories and novels regarding a specific place, or they can be revealed by means
of on-site interviews. By looking at narratives, the character (a user, inhabitant or In design, descriptive, transcriptive and prescriptive tools can be used simulta-
other stakeholder) also comes into play. Transcriptive site research thereby offers neously. The three paths, in that way, present three different elaborations of the
ways to include users perspectives and investigate the role of activities and events same approach, which can be used accordingly for every design task at hand. For
in the way a site is socially embedded in a city. Techniques discussed in the chapter example, prescriptive scenarios, offering alternatives for future development, can
Prescription offer other ways to deal with the reality of a given site precisely by be linked to evocative descriptions of perceptual qualities. The threefold bridge of
immediately countering it with imagination. Automatic writing, a tool derived from description, transcription and prescription thus provides possibilities for paral-
Arrival ~ Urban Literacy
lel movements between theoretical thought and architectural practice, between while Marilyn Chandler investigates the role of the home in American literature.
intellect and experience. Ultimately, the bridge of urban literacy stages the position According to Belgian architect Wim Cuyvers, this focus on the private space in
of the architect: the architect becomes the one who realizes that there are mul- architecture-literature discussions is understandable: It seems a given that ones
tiple paths, and that the key task is to creatively use and integrate them, not into own place should be . . . the locus of the existential. So for architects it was self-
one solution, but into multiple alternatives that a design can make possible. The evident to regard the house as the ideal space to situate the themes and the insights
architect who does not limit his view to a birds-eye perspective, but one who also from the novels574. However, the private space of the house is only available to
takes a stance for the poetic detail of materiality; who addresses, through the gaze those who can afford it, writes Cuyvers: . . . we come to the terrible realization that
of literature, existential themes; who explores the borders between bodily experi- the home, which we thought was the ideal environment to be, to reflect on exist-
ence and intellectual discourse; who mediates between the subject and the object, ence, is a place reserved exclusively for those who have . . . And suddenly, Cuyvers
the individual and the collective; who offers conditions for spatial practice and writes with a sense of urgency, the house of built architecture is shaken to its very
architectural experience. The architect who can read context as if it were a marvel- foundations, it collapses like a house of cards, and all that remains is the possibility
lous fiction, who can superimpose the layers of a site the visual, the auditive, the of searching for a radically overarching position: away from the house, away from
role of the wind and the shadow, the stories of inhabitants, the surreal associa- the space that you must have towards the space of being, away from the private space
tions; who can indeed compose a stratified understanding of place by taking a path towards the public space.575 The public space, indeed, is proposed here as the very
with different viewpoints, back, forward, left and right, up and down, and from space for investigations on how people experience and live architecture in all its
there, from these combined perspectives, can draw a new vision, by making space complexity and emotional richness. Therefore, I argue that the literary approach
and leaving space untouched, by opening new perspectives, offering directions and that I have introduced here, should be introduced in the discourse on the public
establishing fields, not only metaphorically, but also in a physical sense. realm.576 In contemporary society, is there still such a notion as the public realm,
as theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Jrgen Habermas and Richard Sennett char-
acterized it,577 or do people become detached from their physical environment, no

5.3 The banks: longer needing the city and its architecture? Indeed, the state of the public realm

in the contemporary city has become diffuse: public and private often overlap,
218
grounding in context social events takes place in privatized spheres, while public spaces seem more
and more controlled by surveillance systems. On top of that, the virtual realm has
219

introduced new ways of communication that seem to be able to do without physi-


5.3.1 the field: the public realm cal space. Contemporary communication techniques, though connecting people
through technological means, tend to create a distance between people and their
physical environment. Paradoxically, in order to cope with globalization pro-
The following paragraphs will shine a light on the possible use of the theoretical cesses, the local becomes more important, not for economic reasons, but from
framework that I have built up through this work. Without limiting its possibilities an existential perspective: quality of place has become the key reason for people
for other architectural fields, I choose to focus on the public realm, especially in to choose where to live. If the public realm is indeed one of the essential features
relation to urban regeneration projects, as one of todays most urgent tasks. I will
introduce the field of the public realm, the task of urban regeneration and posi- 574 Wim Cuyvers, From the Dream of the Novel Turned to Stone to the Acknowledgement of
tion my framework vis--vis the most recent alternative approaches in this field. Public Space in OASE#70, Architecture&Literature,reflections / imaginations, Christoph Grafe,
Klaske Havik, Madeleine Maaskant (eds), Rotterdam 2006, p. 25
Even though the claims made in this dissertation about the potential of this liter-
575 Ibidem.
ary approach are of a general character, expanding the field of architecture rather 576 The conceptualisation of the Public Sphere and the changing definitions of public and
than posing its limits, most of the educational and architectural examples I have private has extensively been discussed in our book Architectural Positions. Architectural Positions.
referred to relate to public urban spaces. This is for a reason. So far, most theory Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds
exploring the connection between literature and architecture has predominantly (eds.), Sun Publishers, Nijmegen, 2009. See especially the theoretical introduction, pp. 17-45
concerned private spaces.573 Gaston Bachelards The Poetics of Space, for example, and the introduction to the chapter Definitions, pp. 49-53
577 Jrgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der ffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der
focuses on the intimate spaces of the house as generators of poetic experience,
brgerlichen Gesellschaft. Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt 1962; English trans. The Structural
573 See for example: Marilyn R. Chandler, Dwelling in the Text. Houses in American Fiction, Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Studies in contem-
University of California Press, Los Angeles/ London, 1991 and Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of porary German social thought, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1989; Richard Sennett, The Fall of
Space. The classic look at how we experience intimate places, Beacon Press, Boston 1994 [1964] Public Man. Vintage, New York 1977

Arrival ~ Urban Literacy


of urban life: the place where people meet, the exchange of thoughts and ideas in plays a role. Urban innovation is a term used by Peter Hall, who stated that the city
urban space, the celebration of difference, the interactivity between urban space is a necessary breeding ground for all sorts of innovation as well as for economic
and the everyday practice of its inhabitants then providing conditions for a lively, and social change.581 The notion of Temporary Use is seen by the Urban Catalyst
well-functioning public realm is an important task for contemporary architects Research group582 as a neglected resource of urban planning and development.
and urban planners. It is through an inclusive gaze, addressing these interactions Instead of focusing on the permanent and visible, the Urban Catalysts project
between space and use, individual and collective, subject and object, that such con- emphasized the ephemeral, stating that temporary uses and users do have posi-
ditions for a public realm can be thought and produced. tive economic and social effects on places in the city. Incubator policy is a political
device developed in a number of Dutch cities583 to encourage creative groups to
use marginal sites as creative breeding places. The Creative City debate can be
seen as one of the approaches born from the urban innovation discourse, and was
5.3.2 the city: urban regeneration578 initiated in the 1990s by among others Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini,584
while Richard Florida helped to raise a great awareness of the innovative potential
of the so-called creative class.585 The transition from a production-oriented to a
In many cities, abandoned industrial sites offer possibilities for the development concept-oriented society is seen in this discussion as a significant societal trans-
of new urban life close to the historic city centres. Writers, artists and other crea- formation that strongly influences the way in which we relate to the city and the
tive professionals are often the first to discover the strong potential and rough aes- built environment. The observation of Creative City thinkers, as simple as it is far-
thetics of such industrial wastelands, which in some cases is the start of alternative reaching, is that people, and more specifically the creativity of the urban populace,
bottom-up processes of urban regeneration. Such artistic users have the capacity to are the most valuable resource for urban development: Cities have one crucial
recognize the social and atmospherical potential of places, appreciating the uncer- resource their people. Human cleverness, desires, motivations, imagination
tainties of indeterminacy. In this way, many former harbour areas, industrial zones and creativity are replacing location, natural resources and market access as urban
and abandoned factories across Europe have become breeding grounds of cultural resources.586 This means that the relation between people and the environment
and creative economies.579 The potential of such creative approaches has since been they live and work in, in other words, lived and social aspects of places acquires a
220 recognized by planners and policymakers, who realize that taking into account
581 Peter Hall, Cities in Civilisation. Culture, Innovation and Urban Order, Weidenfeld, London 1998.
221
site-specific perceptual and atmospheric qualities, along with the active involve- 582 This research group was initiated by the Technische Universitt Berlin and funded by the
ment of local actors, is key to successful spatial development. In this context, new European Union focussing on the temporary uses of residual urban areas in five European cities,
approaches such as Urban Innovation, Temporary Use, Incubator policy and Naples, Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin and Helsinki Lehtovuori, Panu, Hentil, Helka-Liisa, and
Creative City580 appeared in the field of urban regeneration. These approaches Christer Bengs. Temporary uses. The forgotten resource of urban planning Espoo: Publications in the
question the value of traditional master planning, and are aimed at a more expe- Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, 2003. See also: Florian Haydnand Robert Temel (Eds.),
Temporary Urban Spaces. Concepts for the Use of City Spaces, Birkhaser, Basel 2006
riential understanding of urban places, in which the lived experience of places
583 See for example www.broedplaatsamsterdam.nl, see also Klaske Havik, Monotony and
578 This section is based on a number of earlier publications on the theme of urban regen- Diversity along the Banks of the IJ, in OASE73, Gentrification, Flows and Counter-Flows, Pnina
eration in architectural reviews Maja, OASE and de Architect, as well as a study on alternative Avidar, Klaske Havik et. al. (eds.), NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2007, pp. 129-137
politics in urban innovation developed together with Panu Lehtovuori. 584 Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini, The Creative City, Demos, London 1995 and Charles
Klaske Havik Strength and Vulnerability. Creativity at former industrial sites in the Landry, The Creative City -A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, Earthskin, London 2000;
Netherlands in: MAJA Estonian Architectural Review ,Tallinn: Kirjastus Maja O, 2-2005 (44), see also: Richard Florida, The Rise of Creative Class: And How Its transforming Work, Leisure,
pp. 54-61; Klaske Havik, Monotony and diversity along the banks of the IJ in: In Pnina Community and Everyday Life, New York 2002; Jan Verwijnen and Panu Lehtovuori (eds.), Creative
Avidar, Klaske Havik, and David Mulder (eds) OASE 73 Gentrification. Flows and Counterflows, Cities Cultural Industries, Urban Development and the Information Society, UIAH publishers,
NAi Publishers Rotterdam 2007, pp. 129-136; Panu Lehtovuori and Klaske Havik, Alternative Helsinki 1996; Simon Franke and Evert Verhagen (eds.), Reflect #05, Creativiteit en de stad - hoe
Politics in Urban Innovation, in: Lily Kong and Justin OConnor (eds.), Creative Economies de creatieve economie de stad verandert, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2005
Creative Cities: Asian-European Perspectives, Springer 2009, pp. 207-228 585 Richard Florida introduced the concept of the Creative Class. By using the word class
579 See for a number of cases of bottom-up developments of former industrial sites across Florida suggests that a significant social revolution is involved. After all, it was the terminology
Europe from the early 1990s; Peti Buchel and Bert Hogervorst, The Turning Tide, The users role Marx used to describe a revolution in thinking about the city, society and economics. Perhaps
in the redevelopment of harbour buildings in North-West Europe, De Appelbloesem Pers, Amsterdam this powerful language is why Floridas work is so successful. The danger in his popularity
1997. See also: Factory Smoke, Quaderns darquitectura i urbanisme #230, Barcelona 2001. and of his all-too inclusive definition of who belongs to the creative class, however, is that the
580 For a discussion on these concepts see also : Panu Lehtovuori and Klaske Havik, terminology is applied too superficially. Richard Florida, The Rise of Creative Class: And How Its
Alternative Politics in Urban Innovation, in: Lily Kong and Justin OConnor (eds.), Creative transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York 2002
Economies Creative Cities: Asian-European Perspectives, Springer 2009, pp. 207-228 586 Charles Landry, The Creative City -A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, London 2000, pp xiii

Arrival ~ Urban Literacy


far more important position in the debate about the city. Of increasing significance processes in urban development, all take part in what I have called, after Charles
to any city is how the public space is experienced, how everyday occurrences and Landry, urban literacy.
special events find their place within the city and how the so-called creative class
can commit to a city.587 As discussed at the departure of this work, urban literacy was proposed by Landry
as a possible tool in a broad interdisciplinary approach to urbanism.588 The design
These approaches to urban regeneration have in common their focus on site-spec- of a city, in Landrys view, is a complex activity involving several different per-
ificity, user perspectives and changeability in development processes. First, the spectives. He pleas for more attention to experiencing and understanding the
meaning of place shifts from mere pragmatic location, with a focus on availability city and for responding to it accordingly. This requires a broader set of instru-
of material, labour and infrastructure, to a focus on the experience and appropria- ments, beyond urban planning and architecture. Every crevice in the city had a
tion of place. Since the economy of the city is no longer directly related to indus- hidden story or undiscovered potential that could be re-used for a positive urban
trial modes of production, factors such as industry, infrastructure and employ- purpose, Landry concluded once he recognized creativity as a resource for urban
ment make way for softer factors such as social-spatial practices, atmosphere, development.589 Precisely this connection to stories offers an interesting and
diversity and the quality of public space. Second, the role of local actors such as productive view on urban innovation. In his argument for a more inclusive under-
users, inhabitants and other stakeholders becomes crucial in urban regeneration standing of urbanism, Landry thus introduces the concept of urban literacy as a
processes precisely because they are the ones who live, appropriate and develop way of reading and understanding cities. He defines urban literacy as the ability
their environment. Therefore, existing and new techniques of participatory plan- and skill to read the city and understand how cities work.590 Urban literacy, as a
ning have gained a renewed interest in urban planning. New business models com- kind of language that could involve the reading of the city by a number of literary
bining private and public parties in sharing responsibility for development pro- tools, such as the use of literary characters or evocative descriptions regarding the
cesses are finding their way into urban practice. Third, designers, politicians and senses, can be seen as a way to take into account such site-specific potential. Urban
planners dealing with urban regeneration processes have to find ways to address literacy, as coined by Charles Landry in the Creative City discourse, thus offers a
indeterminacy. Because of the increasing mobility of people and labour, the urban new perspective for the urgent task of architects and urban planners to design the
master plan can no longer be seen as something stable. New techniques and contemporary public realm.
222 approaches have to be developed that address these uncertainties in a productive 223
way. In current urban projects, especially in regeneration projects of industrial While Landry has brought up the term as a possible perspective, he did not
sites, alternative approaches thus appear in which the experience of the public further explore how it is embedded in spatial theory and how it could be opera-
realm, the users perspective and the imagination of the uncertain are taken into tional in urban and architectural practice. As Landry, in the end of his book,
account precisely the three aspects that I have attempted to discuss in this work. explicitly invited others to take its themes forward and explore issues not fully
addressed,591 my efforts to formulate three elaborations of urban literacy can be
seen as such. In my view, urban literacy provides a way to include the lived experi-
ence, the users perspective and the imagination of alternative futures in current
5.3.3 the view: urban literacy tasks of urban regeneration, by means of literary techniques in spatial research
and design. Descriptions of places and the analysis of existing narratives are used
to investigate the creative potential of such locations, while scriptive techniques,
The above mentioned approaches to urban regeneration, however, predominantly such as evocative description, narrative and scenario offer tools for design. This
focus on policies and procedures, rather than offering clues for spatial design dis- approach makes it possible to include the experiential aspects of place and to
ciplines. The knowledge of such urban regeneration approaches should therefore use local sources for urban cultural production. While the approach is grounded
be combined with knowledge and instruments concerning urban and architec- in spatial theory, it offers practical tools for design and analysis, appropriate for
tural design, which specifically deal with the important urban issues such as place the contemporary questions of urban regeneration. This work thus elaborates
experience, use and imagination. Such spatial tools and knowledge, addressing the
experience and appropriation of place, involving local actors such as users, inhab- 588 Charles Landry, The Creative City- a toolkit for urban innovators, Comedia / Earthscan,
London 2000, , p 246-247. See for a more detailed discussion of Landrys definition the first
itants and other stakeholders, and taking into account the changeability of uses and
chapter of this work: Departure.
589 Ibidem, p. 7
587 Richard Florida, The Rise of Creative Class: And How Its transforming Work, Leisure, 590 Ibidem, pp. 246-247
Community and Everyday Life, New York 2002 591 Ibidem, p. 257

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the concept of urban literacy, specifying in which ways it indeed offers another
dimension in questions of place making. Together, the three notions description,
transcription and prescription provide a new and productive perspective on urban
regeneration. By using this threefold literary bridge, it becomes possible not only
to read the lived experience of place, but also to actively write it through architec-
tural and urban practice.

224 225

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Epilogue ljubljana, 1921

Home again. In peace. After more than thirty years in the rush of the metropolis, I have
left Vienna and my master Otto Wagner, I have left Prague and the greatness of the city. I
was in the centre of European architecture, I took part in the development of new ideas for
a modern architecture, for the cities of the twentieth century, I could build in stone and
words. Nevertheless, I came back. I am too silent to be in the foreground. I came back to
live a modest life, to again inhabit the town in which I am rooted, that I know so well that
it inhabits me. My home is a small house, behind the church of Trnovo. Every day, I walk
the path that I paved with red stones, around the corner, and I enter the church through
its heavy front door. It is always pleasantly cold in here, and I like to take place on the
long wooden bench with the red pillow seating. My eyes follow the slender curve in the
ceiling, and meet the light above. I sit in silence. When leaving the church, I find myself
in front of the small stream Gradaica. It comes from the mountain, it winds through
the villages and almost touches my house before meeting the Ljubljanica River, just down
the road. On Sunday mornings I follow the Gradaica upstream for a while, then I cross
the village of Rona and take the steep path, with its steps grown from tree trunks, to the
Ronik church on the hill. After the service I descend the other way, through the forest and
Tivoli Park, passing the palace, down to the city where I meet my sister at the river for our
Sunday lunch. Walking, I am the reader of my town, I take the same routes over and over:
226 the straight line from home to the city centre, or the route following the stream and then 227
the river, a bit longer because of its curves, and also because I stop more often to look at the
water below, to smell the wet stones and hear the wind playing in the trees. Today, I cross
the stream and walk towards the city centre. Emona Street, the small houses, trees, then I
cross the bigger Zois Street that leads down to the Ljubljanica on my right hand side. In the
distance, across the river, I can see the church of St Jacobski, and the Castle hill. Continu-
ing my way, I pass old Roman walls. Porous stone, in shades of grey, yellow and brown.
The small square of the French Revolution, an awkward intersection of minor streets, as
if the street hesitates, then bends, slightly, and continues. Then Vega Street, lined by trees
and more urban buildings, standing a bit higher and a few metres back from the street
because of the old remnants. I reach Congress Square. Its size is urban, its church sits
on a corner, which I like: it splits the space in two, as it were: in front of the church the
urban plane, sloping almost unnoticeably down to the river, only blocked by the last row
of buildings the Philharmonic Hall. Next to this the other half, a park. Maybe I should
accentuate this make the part in front of the church more monumental, the park more
park-like. Plane trees rather than chestnuts, the paths a star-shape, maybe a fountain
. . . In the tavern I meet my old friend from Vienna, who works at the municipality. We
drink a glass of red wine and we smoke, silently. Then I make a sketch and show him the
associations I had during my walk: a new layout for Congress Square, and some small
adjustments along the route.

Epilogue ~ Urban Literacy


ljubljana, 1933 ljubljana, 1940

That is what I do, I mark the points on my routes, I make connections visible, but I do I am not making a new city, I am fulfilling the city that has in potential always been,
not unveil the mask entirely. My game is to discover fragments and to bring them to life, and that has waited for me, its architect, to be realized in its full glory. From my modern
slowly, one by one: a pavement, a monument for a poet, a lamp pole, a line of trees, masters I have learned about monumentality, about tabula rasa and breaking with the
a pyramid. My sources are limited but I use what I can find, what is under my feet, I past. I had to learn these things in order to forget them consciously, for in Ljubljana my
pulverize stones, I pour concrete, I use what grows, the trees, I use what is left over from task is different. I was born in this town and I will die here for that it becomes, for that it
demolished houses, columns and windows and piping. I make the scenes, separately, becomes itself. No longer a sleeping provincial town, but the city it has always wanted to
and then they begin to communicate: they speak, they speak to people, they tell them how be, crowned by its castle, its streets radiant sunbeams springing off from the centre, the
to walk this city, how to use it, where to go and where to sit, where to honour their ances- river its vital vein. I am the writer of this city, I write in stones and trees, I write the paths
tors, the musicians and poets of this town, where to meet and talk. All of a sudden, one under peoples feet, I write the course of the river, I write in repetition. My handwriting
fragment leads to another I tie them together to form a story, more stories, uncountable repeats itself in the city, in different disguises: in the pyramids and spheres at bridges and
stories as all the routes intersect and new combinations can be made. Yes, I believe it is street corners, silently referring to one another, in the pavement of niches and benches, in
like this, I do not make the story, I make its parts, and provide the means for the people to subtle additions to buildings, in the replacement of old buildings by new ones, express-
make their stories. From the intersection of Zois Street and Emona Street I have paved the ing the spirit of the true Ljubljana. I have erected a building for wisdom in the city, the
sidewalks, I planted trees to accompany the walk down to the river. From there to Jacob- National and University Library. Its faade in stone and brick, alive in its plasticity, can
ski Square across the river, it needed verticality: trees, slim poplar trees to line up with be seen from the Castle hill, and even when seen from there its rhythm seems to speak with
the church. And the river, the river itself, I give it guidance: where to flow, where to rest, the million voices of its erudite content. I have given it doors in heavy copper, with noble
where to be crossed, where to be looked at. I tame it with sluices, and I cherish it in the horse heads as handshakes. Inside, the dark tone of respect. Black marble, big columns,
city. And then I make it all come together at the three bridges. In fact, I built only two of a monumental staircase leading in one long flight to the reading room, where the light is.
228 them, two footbridges on both sides of the old bridge that had become too small. Regard- I made the reading room high and pleasant, I used wooden panelling for the walls, the 229
ing the old bridge, I simply gave it new railings and lamp poles corresponding to the new floor and the ceiling, I designed wooden tables on marble columns, and modern indus-
bridges on its sides. It was a simple solution, but it fit my purpose. The bridge could, in trial lamps to enlighten the students on their path to knowledge. I have envisioned a plan
this way, become more than a bridge: through its width and spatial complexity, the triple for a whole new university, at the edge of Tivoli Park. How great it would be, such a centre
bridge is an urban place in itself, the paths with different directions make people aware of knowledge and innovation embedded in the citys most prominent park, a dialogue
of their position and trajectory, and those of others. The space I have left in between the between the old power of the palace and the modern power of knowledge . . . So far, the
bridges allows the river to be crossed without losing contact with the water. In between, municipality has not approved my plan, but I continue to take steps towards it: I have
in the niches on the lower banks, I have planted some poplar trees. From both sides of the already redesigned the axis from Tivoli Palace to the city, widening the path, placing trees
river, only their leaves can be seen, while from the bridge the small lawn in which they are and lamp poles along it. I even took care of the dead of the city, for that they, too, will rest
rooted becomes visible. Also, I included the lower banks in this interplay: stairs lead down in the spirit of Ljubljana. I designed the gates to the ale cemetery, I made the chapels,
from the footbridges to a public toilet or to a restaurant. I made the lower bank a place to the memorial monuments, the tombstones for the dead. My urban project, my life work, is
sit, next to the bridge, under it, part of it, but at a distance. The bridge is simultaneously timeless: there is no distinction between future and past, between the living and the dead.
water and land, it separates and connects, defining the two sides of the river as different I am neither a modernist nor a classicist, I observe and craft the city in all its dimensions,
entities, while bringing them together. Neither a square nor a building, this place is both I care for its details and its urban whole, I make it speak, I make it come alive by its inter-
a passage and a centre. The triple bridge is now the very core of the city, where all routes secting narratives, I imagine and I realize this city, my city, Ljubljana.592
intersect.

592 Final note. For Pleniks story, I have made use of Peter Krei, Plenik. The Complete Works,
Academy Editions / Ernst&Sohn, London 1993, specifically the chapter Urban Interventions,
pp. 109-126. For my walks in Ljubljana and for information about Pleniks life, the guide
of Andrej Hausky, Janez Koelj, Joe Plenik in Ljubljana and Slovenia, Cankarjeva zaloba,
Ljubljana, 2007, has been helpful, as well as the Ljubljana Architectural Museum located in
his former house.

Epilogue ~ Urban Literacy


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jkheid van een eiland, De Arbeider- dam/ The Monacelli Press, New Architecture, Milan 1996 Panu Lehtovuori, Experience and vader. [My Fathers Century] Atlas,
spers, Amsterdam 2005 Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, York, 1995 Conflict: The Production of Urban Amsterdam/Antwerp 1999
Penguin edition, 1972 [1969] Pivi Kymalinen, Geographies Space, Ashgate, London 2010
Michel Houellebecq, Leven, lijden, Rem Koolhaas /AMO/OMA, in Writing- Re-imagining place, Yeoryia Manolopoulou Drawing
schrijven/ methode Voetnoot, James Joyce, Dubliners, Everymans Content, Taschen, Kln, 2004 Nordia Geographical Publica- Panu Lehtovuori and Klaske on Chance: Indeterminacy, Percep-
Antwerp 2003 [original in French Library, London, 1991 [1914] tions, Oulu, 2005 Havik, Alternative politics in tion and Design, University College
as Rester vivant - mthode, Editions Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter urban innovation, in: Lily Kong London, 2003
de la Diffrence, 1991] Carl Jung, Synchronicity: An (ed.), Conversations with students, Charles Landry, The Creative and Justin OConnor (eds.),
Acausal Connecting Principle, Princeton Architectural Press City- a toolkit for urban innovators, Creative Economies Creative Cities: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenom-
Steven Holl, Anchoring, Princeton Princeton University Press, New and Rice University, New York / Comedia / Earthscan, London Asian-European Perspectives, enology of Perception. Routledge
Architectural Press, New York, York 1973 [1952] Houston 1996 2000 Springer 2009, pp. 207-228 New York 2005 [original edition:
1989 Phnomnologie de la perception.
Franz Kafka, Das Schloss (1926), Rem Koolhaas, introduction to Charles Landry and Franco Bian- Panu Lehtovuori, Helka-Liisa Paris (Gallimard) 1945]
Steven Holl, Intertwining. Selected English translation by Willa Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey chini, The Creative City, Demos, Hentil, and Christer Bengs. Tem-
projects 1989-1995, Princeton and Edwin Muir: The Castle in: Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze London 1995 porary uses. The forgotten resource of
Franz Kafka, The Complete Novels Tsung Leong (eds.) Project on Jeremy Lane, Pierre Bourdieu urban planning Publications in the

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References ~ Urban Literacy


Frans Sturkenboom, Architectuur Museum of Modern Art Papers on Enrique Walker, The Monacelli
en het boek in OASE#29, Sprekende Architecture, New York / Graham Press, New York 2006
Architectuur, SUN Nijmegen, Foundation for Advanced Studies
1991, pp. 62-67 in the Fine Arts, Chicago, 1966 Enrique Walker Under Con-
(used version: reprint of the straint in Michiel Riedijk (ed.)
Patrick Sskind, Das Parfum. Die second edition 1977, New York Architecture as a Craft, Architecture,
Geschichte eines Mrders, Dio- 1992) Drawing, model and position, SUN
genes,1985; English translation Publishers, Amsterdam, 2010,
Perfume: Story of a Murderder, Ton Verstegen, Gebaren. Atmosfer- pp. 25-33
Penguin Books, London 2007 ische waarneming en architectuur,
Art EZ Press / djonge Hond, Dirk van Weelden, Steden in
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and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cam- a course around the earth], in:
bridge, Mass / London 1996 Ton Verstegen, Tropismen. Meta- Arjen Mulder, Dirk van Weelden
forische animatie en architectuur. (eds.), Architectuur&Literatuur,
Bernard Tschumi, Architecture in/ NAi publishers, Rotterdam 2001 De Gids nr. 11, November 2004,
of Motion, NAI Publishers Rotter- p. 877
dam, 1997 Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the
Age of Divided Representation The Huib van der Werf, Kate Orff,
Bernard Tschumi, Urban Pleas- Question of Creativity in the Shadow Merijn Oudenampsen,
ures and the Moral Good, in: of Production, MIT Press, 2004 Klaske Havik, Waterfront Visions.
Assemblage 25, MIT Press 1995, p. 9 Transformations in North Amster-
Anthony Vidler, The Architectural dam, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam
Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Uncanny. essays in the modern 2009
Transcripts, Academy Editions, unhomely, MIT Press, 1994
London 1994, [1981] Mark Wigley, Constants New
238 Martien de Vletter, The Critical Babylon. The Hyper-Architecture of 239
Bernard Tschumi and Irene Seventies, Architecture and Urban Desire, Witte de With Center for
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the Beginning of the 21st Century, 1968-1982, NAi Publishers, Rot- ers, Rotterdam 1998
The Monacelli Press New York terdam 2004
2003 August Willemse, Fernando Pessoa,
Leo Vroman, Gedichten, vroegere en gedichten, De Arbeiderspers
Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The latere, 1949; selection of poems Amsterdam/Antwerpen 2001
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James S. Holmes and Wiliam versation with Steven Holl , in:
Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia. A study of Jay Smith, Dutch interior: postwar Steven Holl, 1986-1996, El Croquis,
environmental perception, attitudes poetry of the Netherlands and Flan- Madrid, 1996, p. 11
and values, University of Minne- ders, Columbia University Press,
sota, Prentice hall Inc., Englewood New York Guildford, Surrey 1984 Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres.
Cliffs, New Jersey 1974 Architectural Environments, Sur-
Gijs Wallis de Vries, De liter- rounding Objects Birkhauser, Basel,
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Contradiction in Architecture, The Architecture, Conversations with

References ~ Urban Literacy


Nederlandse samenvatting gemaakt van aan elkaar gerelateerde concepten: descriptie, transcriptie en pres-
criptie. De drie concepten zijn elk gebaseerd op vaardigheden
van literaire schrijvers, die ik vervolgens naar het domein van de architectuur en
stedenbouw heb getracht te vertalen.
Stedelijk alfabetisme. Een scriptieve benadering van
Het hoofdstuk Descriptie richt zich op de evocatieve beschrijving van de ervaring
de ervaring, het gebruik en de verbeelding van plekken. van stad en architectuur, en daarmee op de vaardigheid om sferen, materialen en
details zorgvuldig te observeren en te beschrijven met meer zintuigen dan alleen
het visuele. Literaire beschrijvingen van ruimtes geven blijk van een sensitiviteit
Dit onderzoeksproject bespreekt hoe literatuur waardevolle inzichten biedt die ons jegens zulke themas, zoals ik in dit hoofdstuk toon aan de hand van een aantal
in staat stellen bewust te worden van de manier waarop mensen plekken beleven, fragmenten uit romans en pozie. Als theoretische component van dit hoofdstuk
gebruiken en verbeelden. Mijn zoektocht naar het formuleren van een literaire wordt de perceptie van architectuur belicht, en daarmee het spanningsveld tussen
benadering van architectuur en de stad komt voort uit een kritiek op het gebrek aan subject en object. Lefebvres begrip van geleefde ervaring komt hierbij aan de orde,
aandacht voor deze aspecten en op de soms oppervlakkige beeld-gerichte tendens evenals de fenomenologische stroming in de filosofie die ingaat op de zintuigelijke
binnen het architectonisch en stedenbouwkundige debat. Ik betoog dat vandaag de perceptie, en het begrip van potische ontvankelijkheid zoals omschreven door
dag een integrale benadering die deze ervaringsaspecten van architectuur serieus Gaston Bachelard. Het werk van architect Steven Holl wordt besproken als voor-
in beschouwing neemt een dringende noodzaak is voor architecten en stedenbou- beeld van een descriptieve benadering.
wers. Op zoek naar een meer genuanceerd perspectief dat de geleefde ervaring
binnen het architectuurdebat zou kunnen brengen en de ervaring van de gebruiker Transcriptie brengt de sociale dimensie van stad en architectuur naar voren, aan
als verwaarloosde bron van stedelijke en architectonische kennis zou waarderen, de hand van de wisselwerking tussen lezer en schrijver- of, in de architectuur,
kwam ik terecht bij de literatuur. In dit werk betoog ik dat Henri Lefebvres begrip tussen ontwerper en gebruiker. Literaire fragmenten tonen de onlosmakelijke
240 van geleefde ruimte, ruimte dus die ervaren en geleefd is door gebruikers en relatie tussen ruimte en gebruik, terwijl literaire praktijken die bewust experi- 241
die herinneringen en verbeeldingen oproept, precies het soort ruimte is dat we menteren met de wisselwerking tussen lezer en schrijver ook aan de orde komen.
in literaire teksten tegenkomen. In hun evocatieve beschrijvingen van plekken en Het theoretische betoog in dit hoofdstuk legt een verband tussen het literaire
ruimtes lijken schrijvers, meer dan de meeste architecten of architectuurtheore- begrip narratief en de sociale dimensie van architectonische en stedelijke ruimte
tici, getalenteerd te zijn architectuur te lezen op verschillende niveaus, en om Auteurs zoals Michel de Certeau, Richard Sennett en Paul Ricoeur bieden hier de
de verhouding tussen mensen en hun leefomgeving zeer accuraat en met oog voor belangrijke theoretische posities. De ontwerp-instrumenten die voortkomen uit
detail te beschrijven. De hypothese van dit werk is dat als literatuur zulke inzichten deze benadering omvatten onder meer het gebruik van het narratief of verhaal en
in architectuur kan bieden, een literaire benadering, die gebruik maakt van instru- literaire personages. De positie van Bernard Tschumi als een architect die zich
menten uit de literatuur, ook denkbaar is binnen het domein van onderzoek en intensief met deze onderwerpen heeft beziggehouden, wordt in dit hoofdstuk naar
ontwerp van stad en architectuur. voren gebracht.

In literaire teksten is er sprake van een zekere ambivalentie ten aanzien van sub- Prescriptie, tenslotte, belicht de positie van de architect die per definitie ontwerpt
jectiviteit en objectiviteit, schrijver en lezer, fictie en realiteit. In dit werk stel ik voor een onbekende toekomst en die daarom balanceert tussen realiteit en fictie.
voor dat deze ambiguteit, die wellicht op het eerste gezicht een complicerende In literatuur gaat de constructie van nieuwe werelden vaak gepaard met een kritiek
factor lijkt om architectuur met literaire middelen te beschouwen, te zien is als op het bestaande. Ook in de architectuur kan met een ontwerp een kritische positie
kracht. De blik van de literaire schrijver stelt ons in staat om tussen deze schijn- worden ingenomen. Net als literaire schrijvers construeren ook architecten een
bare tegenstellingen heen en weer te bewegen, daarmee illustreren dat de geleefde imaginaire toekomstige situatie waarin hun ontwerpen plaats hebben. Dit hoofd-
ervaring van architectuur in feite juist draait om het samengaan ervan. Zoekend stuk bespreekt de creatieve balans tussen realiteit en verbeelding, eerst door een
naar een brug die de geleefde ervaring een nieuwe rol kan geven in het stedelijk aantal literaire voorbeelden te noemen waarbij verbeelding een cruciale rol speelt
en architectonisch onderzoek en praktijk, onderzocht ik daarom de mogelijkheid en vervolgens door enkele theoretische concepten nader te belichten. Bakthins
om van deze brug een literaire te maken. Om de verschillende perspectieven die idee van de chronotoop als temporele en ruimtelijke constructie waarbinnen
een literaire benadering te bieden heeft aan de orde te stellen, heb ik een drieluik schrijvers hun wereldbeeld construeren is daar een van, evenals het begrip scena-
Samenvatting ~ Urban Literacy
Curriculum vitae
rio. Het werk van Rem Koolhaas wordt in dit hoofdstuk in beeld gebracht als pres-
criptieve benadering van architectuur.

Samen vormen de drie termen descriptie, transcriptie en prescriptie een raam- Klaske Maria Havik was born on October 13th, 1975, in Haren, the Netherlands.
werk waarmee ervaring, gebruik en verbeelding van plekken aan de orde kunnen She attended the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, and started her studies
worden gesteld, en waarmee instrumenten worden ontwikkeld voor ruimtelijk in architecture at Delft University of Technology in 1993. In 1996-1997, she also
onderzoek en ontwerp. Elk van de drie takken van deze literaire brug raakt aan een studied literary writing at Schrijversvakschool t Colofon in Amsterdam. She
ander theoretisch veld en bespreekt andere voorbeelden uit de ontwerp praktijk. studied at the Department of Architecture of Helsinki University of Technology
De drie takken van de brug leiden weliswaar gezamenlijk tot dezelfde ruimte van in Finland in 1998. After her graduation in Delft in 2000, with a landscape and
stedelijk alfabetisme, maar bieden tegelijkertijd de mogelijkheid om verschil- architectural design for the Helsinki waterfront (nominated for Archiprix), she
lende routes te kiezen. Door deze literaire benadering te gebruiken, is het wellicht has worked for several years as an editor for the Dutch architectural review de
mogelijk om geleefde ruimte niet alleen te lezen, maar ook te schrijven door Architect. As an architect, she has been involved in architectural design projects,
middel van het architectonisch en stedenbouwkundig ontwerp. with architecture studios de Ruimte and qenep. These projects often dealt with the
theme of urban regeneration, such as the development of the former ship-wharf
NDSM in Amsterdam into a cultural breeding place.

After teaching courses in architectural theory and writing as a guest lecturer at the
Faculty of Architecture in Delft, Klaske Havik became assistant professor in 2004.
Within the section Architecture and Modernity, she has taught master courses in
architecture theory, and tutored the graduation studios Border Conditions and
Public Realm. She initiated the elective master 2 course City&Literature, which
introduces literary instruments to students of architecture. She co-organized the
242 seminar series Architectural Positions in 2007, and co-edited the anthology 243
Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers
2009. She has also lectured at other schools of architecture in Europe, including
Helsinki University of Technology in Finland, the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje,
Macedonia and the EKA School of Architecture in Tallinn, Estonia.

Klaske Havik writes regularly for architecture magazines in the Netherlands and
Nordic countries and is editor of the Dutch-Belgian architecture journal OASE. Her
writing is not limited to architecture: since 1999, she has presented her poems at a
number of literary events in the Netherlands, such as the Poetry International
Festival in Rotterdam (2002). Poems of her hand have been published in a number
of Dutch poetry collections.

Curriculum vitae ~ Urban Literacy

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